If someone would have told me a few years ago that I would be awake at dawn washing rice, I would not have believed them. Yet this morning, while the breeze outside tickled the windows gently reminding me that it is still winter, I found myself at the sink washing rice. Fingers in grains, water rinsing, I am connected to centuries of people throughout the world. Though no one in my family has done more to prepare rice than grab the red box of “minute Rice” and boil water – I feel a sense of connectedness; a tap on the shoulder suggesting that regardless of how far we have come or the advances in technology, people continue to wash rice.