Excerpts from Letters to Mom in italics.
13 September 1965
Guess first I'll fill out the "questionnaire." I haven't written Uncle Shun yet but I intend to. I just finished writing a note on a get well card to Pa. Did he have a heart attack? No typhoons (as hurricanes are called in the Pacific) have hit here since I arrived. We keep good track of them (the weather central on Guam) and we (here) get plenty of warning. Glad you liked the dolls.
I'm getting pretty good with chopsticks. [The cute bar maid at the MAAG "63" Club tutored him on the fine art of chopsticking. The catechism involved picking rounded ice cubes from his bourbon and water using two flimsy bar stirs.] The Chinese really eat family style. Everyone has a bowl, chopsticks and a sort of oversized spoon or scoop. Your bowl is filled with rice or noodles and anywhere from several to fifteen or twenty other large bowls of goodies are placed on the table.
[This must have been a special occasion such as celebrating the move into new digs to warrant that many bowls of vegetables, meats and other dishes.] Then you reach out with the chopsticks or sometimes the scoop for soup. Each large bowl is "community property" so to speak. CiCi and her girlfriend (& her mother) help me out by putting tidbits from the large bowls into mine. I'm not sure of what I'm eating one hundred percent of the time, but most of it is good and tasty. [The main table attraction or centerpiece is usually fish with a protruding eyeball staring at you until one of the Taiwanese mercifully plucks the glaring, delicacy with the chopsticks. Steve learned to twist the chopsticks to function as a fork to pull chunks of fish, but always graciously deferred the honor of consuming the ocular organ. ] Course my taste buds have not completely been acclimated yet.
Saturday nite we had a big meal, many courses, to celebrate moving into a new house. Then the friends & relatives drink toasts. I think everyone toasted to me several times (individually). They see to it that you have a big glass & they manage to find a small one. I also was drinking Hennessey cognac to their beer. Hadn't had any since I left Germany. CiCi said that was the first time she saw me "stinko." It's true too. I've been staying pretty straight, never more than a couple or few drinks a nite.
Tomorrow nite I start Chinese classes with the U of Md here on base. I bought the book and a dictionary already. The USN is giving me tuition assistance providing I pass and don't drop out. [One of the drawbacks was that the evening classes were conducted at Shu Lin Kuo making it extremely impractical to "sleep" in town. CiCi did not encourage him to take Chinese Two.]
I've been eating breakfast regularly but trying to avoid going in the mess hall for dinner. It's the nicest and best I've ever been in. Chinese waiters get you whatever you want and take away your dirty dishes. Friday they had lobster, shrimp, fish and I believe spaghetti. Instead of eating there and getting fatter, I go to the swimming pool, about 100 yards from work and 50 yards from the barracks. Whenever I have time and before it gets too cold, I'll try and swim 17 laps (one-quarter mile) per day. I'll probably only do it once or twice a week. Oh, I then get a sandwich at the snack bar.
CUL (see you later)