Pickle Scented Sugar

When I opened the plastic bag of sugar this morning, it smelled like dill pickles, strange for sugar. It was very strange because, in this area, they do not have dill pickles and no one uses dill. They don't know what it is. The only thing I can figure out is that a bit of the juice from a dill pickle spilled into the container holding the bag of sugar. The pickles came from the International store in the city nearby. It is not unusual to encounter the unusual here. Strange things happen that we cannot explain and they seem to make no sense at all to us. The local people, if they can speak our language at all, either take it for granted and do not understand our confusion or they have no clue either and have given up trying to explain it. They just accept it as part of their lives. It's a different way of living. I'm not sure I will ever be able to totally accept puzzling things without trying to understand first. I'm just not wired that way. That's for stupid people in my culture, the kind who lack ambition, those who choose not to try. To me, it is important to learn and to understand the world. Sometimes, in my quest to figure things out, I hit a brick wall. Understanding has to go on the back burner for a while and see if it makes sense another day. When that happens, I quote a former expat here, "It's China, baby!" No other explanation needed for expats, just, "it's China."