Host Family Gifts

This afternoon, I gave out the gifts I’d brought: cocoa butter lotion for Mma, and Halloween-sized bags of Skittles for the kids. The kids loved (and hoarded!) the candy, and Mma seemed very pleased with the lotion, and shared it around, even rubbing it into Little Sis’s face. Talk about your different cultural expectations of food, though…have you ever seen someone bite into a Skittle? For that matter, is there a singular form of “Skittle”? In my experience, Skittles are eaten in twos and threes, and sometimes by the handful. But that’s because, in my experience, there is an infinite available supply of them. (Not that I eat a lot of candy, but if I ever felt compelled, I know that I could buy as many Skittles—or M&Ms, or Oreos, or whatever other junk food I craved—as I could want.) Here, though, American candy is hard to find, and outlandishly expensive. It’s effectively impossible for my cash-poor host family to get. So when your new host sister brings you your Very Own Bag, it makes sense to savor each Skittle. And that means taking small bites to make each one last a little bit longer.