Rice Dinner Redux

Now that we've been in Jordan 18 months, we 've also experienced a number of things twice - we've been up to Umm Qais twice, we've had two Jordanian Christmases and now we have been to the U.S. Rice Federation's Rice Cooking Competition twice. This is like the Pillsbury Bake-off here without the million dollar prize (the winners did get kitchen appliances). The most noticeable difference between last year and this year's event was they hired a new magician to entertain the audience while the contestants cooked.

One act involved turning those ubiquitous scarves that are in magic shows into flags.

Here Dan was selected as an assistant as he pulled out many-colored record albums - Jordan's population is 50% under the age of 20 - I do not know how many people recognize albums.

Here scarf plus record album....

Here is our friend Ali with the Rice mascot Ricky Rice.

The most amazing part of the magic show was the large number of live animals involved in a 15 minute show - I didn't get the photos but there were 3 rabbits, a duckling, two doves, a mouse and in an amazing audience participation part a fake snake was turned into a real snake which the audience member pulled out of the dark bag. I think if I had been the guest which pulled out a live (albeit small) snake which then slithered around the floor I would still be traumatized and would have been unable to eat the delicious rice dinner which followed.