Day 44 Friday Friendship Feast

Friday Friendship Feast: n. 1. An event held at the Seattle Institute filled with friends and feasting for only $2.50 2. Weekly highlight; a memorable Seattle tradition 3. New expectation for every meal survived around noon on a Friday.


All through high school, particularly my senior year, Friday lunches were held at the McKay house, provided by sweet Sister McKay, and always involved amazing garlic bread and lasagna. This bread was so good that people at school requested pieces to be brought back to them. (Besides, of course, the time when we almost lit the microwave on fire with the easy mac, these lunches are some of my best memories from senior year.) When I moved to Seattle, I was pretty sure that nothing was going to beat this tradition. However, I was soon introduced to Friday Friendship Feast at the Seattle Institute, not necessarily a replacement but definitely a weekly highlight.

Shanghai has yet to provide an event as memorable as Friday lunch or Friday Friendship Feast (or the easy mac incident, for that matter). In fact, today’s lunch was downright sad. Here’s the story: At 11:30, Evan and I walked out of the office and to the elevator. James took a bathroom detour and told us he’d meet us downstairs (we usually hit up the convenience store, grab a Chinese version of the sack lunch and eat back in our office). As Evan and I stood waiting for the elevator, another worker we didn’t know walked up to us and this dialogue proceeded:

Employee: Hello.

Evan and me: Hello.

Employee: Would you like to eat steak with me?

Maggie (to herself): Actually, not really. But good on you for being brave enough to talk to the office white kids.

Evan (out loud): *Chinese* *Chinese* *Chinese* (Translation: Um, where is the steak restaurant? Like, you mean this weekend?)

Worker: *Chinese….hmmm hmm hmm…* (No translation, I’m not sure it would have made sense even if I did speak Chinese.)

Evan: *hmm..mm…Chinese…hmm..* (Well I guess we could go down to the cafeteria with you)

Maggie (to herself): Oh my gosh Evan, really? We can’t just crawl back into our office dungeon and be antisocial?

Maggie (out loud): Ok, sounds good.

So we went with him down to the cafeteria, bought our little meal tickets together, and then proceeded to get into different lines (though there was every indication that we would be sitting together). He got out of the line much faster than we did, and promptly disappeared from our view. Five minutes later, when Evan and I had our food (which by the way, was particularly bad today which made the situation that much more hilarious) we went to look for Employee. Finally, probably five minutes and twenty-six awkward staredowns later, we found him sitting at a table of five or six other employees with no indication of any desire to sit with us. So Evan and I sat at another table and talked about our plans for after we graduate, which was fun too, but really, Employee? So the moral of the story: Fake a language barrier or you will get snookered into eating gross, mushy, mystery squash and bean curd in the Aurora cafeteria with very little to show for it.

*Long post, I know, but I have to mention one other recent effect of Friday Friendship Feast. Tonight I met up with Chenru, a new member of the church in Seattle who Elder Scott and Elder Durrant encouraged me to meet in Shanghai. We went to dinner at the Super Brand Mall and had a wonderful time. Chenru was positively the sweetest thing, we’re going to visit Hangzhou in a few weekends together, which will be great. Anyways, I asked her how she first was introduced to the church, and her response was….Friday Friendship Feast!! So, six months later and an entire continent away, FFF is still doing its job.