(Shopping with a Note)
Today some students took me out for lunch. It was such a nice treat! Instead of sitting there with a few other foreign teachers trying our best to blurt out random Chinese vegetable names, I had students translate the menu for me. What ended up arriving at the table was exactly what we expected, which is a rare occurrence these days! It’s not considered “being bribed” by the university when students buy you lunch or dinner over here, it’s more like a custom. Thank goodness for that, or else I’ve been taking bribes left, right and centre. One of the girls actually did fail her last assignment, I’m glad she wasn’t the one who paid!
The students are very useful to me over here. In Taipei, I had many bilingual friends and also heaps of shop owners spoke some English. In small-town China, no one speaks English. My students help me do lots of things. Today they directed me to a place on campus that will wash my laundry for me, we’ll see how that goes tomorrow - I might get to stop buying all this underwear! Also, I’m going to attempt to buy a train ticket to Beijing this weekend. Since I can’t tell the ticket-seller what I want, I’m having my students write me a note! When you show up at a store with a note, you really do feel like you’re 5 years old again.
Back to my work I go. I’ve got a special soundtrack to my marking tonight: a dog howling along with the rooster - it’s 6:45pm.
Today some students took me out for lunch. It was such a nice treat! Instead of sitting there with a few other foreign teachers trying our best to blurt out random Chinese vegetable names, I had students translate the menu for me. What ended up arriving at the table was exactly what we expected, which is a rare occurrence these days! It’s not considered “being bribed” by the university when students buy you lunch or dinner over here, it’s more like a custom. Thank goodness for that, or else I’ve been taking bribes left, right and centre. One of the girls actually did fail her last assignment, I’m glad she wasn’t the one who paid!
The students are very useful to me over here. In Taipei, I had many bilingual friends and also heaps of shop owners spoke some English. In small-town China, no one speaks English. My students help me do lots of things. Today they directed me to a place on campus that will wash my laundry for me, we’ll see how that goes tomorrow - I might get to stop buying all this underwear! Also, I’m going to attempt to buy a train ticket to Beijing this weekend. Since I can’t tell the ticket-seller what I want, I’m having my students write me a note! When you show up at a store with a note, you really do feel like you’re 5 years old again.
Back to my work I go. I’ve got a special soundtrack to my marking tonight: a dog howling along with the rooster - it’s 6:45pm.
No comments:
Post a Comment