This would be the large 5-10 pound bag of rice that can probably be found in any home of an Asian family worldwide. Although not being Asian myself, my last name is 陈, and so of course our family has one of these bags in our kitchen cupboard at all times since we became the 陈's. So when the school presented us with not just one free bag, but two free bags we were quite excited. Their plan had worked! We would eat at home and not get H1N1.
Unfortunately the administrators forgot one factor in their carefully devised plan to thwart H1N1...and that would small little factor would be the white people. Historically white people worldwide have never had large 5-10 pound bags of rice in their homes. Who would buy that much rice? How long would it take to eat that much? And wouldn't it go bad before eating? After all, Uncle Ben only sells 1 pound bags of rice. Surely a pound of rice is more then enough rice to last for all the rice casseroles that any family would need to make for a long time.
That day walking out of school this historic reality was confirmed by my sweet friend from Wisconsin who stood next to me and said "Can you believe they gave us this much rice. I haven't eaten this much rice in my whole life." I smiled and resisted asking if I could have her bag and then proceeded to tell her that we would finish our two bags in a few months.
Which was a correct statement, because if memory serves me correctly, they passed these bags out sometime in November. I think we opened ours in December when our other giant bag ran out. And just last week I bought a new 5 pound bag of rice after we used the two bags the school gave us. (I buy 5 pound in China you know because who wants to take a 10 pound bag of rice home with them on their bicycle.) So there you have it, how long will it take that huge bag of rice to be eaten? The answer, not too long.
