Chinese Lessons and Fruit

We had our first official Chinese lesson this Wednesday with Ma Qun Fang. It was a surprise whether that was going to be a man or a woman because I don’t know anything about Chinese names. Even my co-workers couldn’t figure it out because some names are unisex. Also, the language coordinator told us the name was Fang Qun Ma, which it’s not. Anyways, SHE is a girl and when she arrived at our apartment, she brought a random friend with her. I think the friend was just for moral support because she didn’t do any teaching and Qun Fang said this was her first time talking to foreigners so she was a little nervous. :) Her English is ok. It’s good enough to learn Chinese from but there are a couple of people at work with better English so if we need clarification we’ll probably just ask them.

We learned the “alphabet” which is a list of the foundation sounds that Chinese words are made of. And then we learned some simple phrases. Qun Fang is so cute, whenever we say something right she goes “Oh yes.” And one time I must have said something perfectly because she gasped and said “You’re so lovely!” Haha. At the end, we showed her some coins we had that looked different and were lighter than normal coins because we didn’t know what they were worth so we couldn’t use them. She totally freaked out about them because some of them she’d never seen before. She said they were old, but a couple of them were from 2001 so China must have redone its money recently. Anyway, she left our apartment saying that she loves us so we must have entertained her quite a bit. :)

In other news, you won’t be hearing about Really anymore because she doesn’t work for Anhui Guilford anymore. We don’t know for sure, but we think she may have been fired. The week before BMW came to visit the plant, everyone was busy making sure the plant looked its best. And part of that was putting up professional-looking signs everywhere labeling the different departments. The signs were in Chinese and English and apparently Really did the translating for them and she spelled a lot of them wrong. It seems like a crazy reason to fire someone, but she left very suddenly and there was no farewell dinner and I’m pretty sure there would have been if this had been an amiable resignation.

FRUIT! I tried a couple of new fruits this week: jujubes and snakeskin fruit. Neither of them were very good. The jujubes are edible, though they taste like apple-flavored Styrofoam (not very juicy). The snakeskin fruit was just weird. I took one small bite and chucked the rest. I should also mention that when I bought it, the ladies working the weighing scale had to go check what the fruit code was for it. That just goes to show how infrequently these are bought. Now I know why.

Jujubes: cute name, mediocre taste

Looks like an armadilloTastes like crap

I’ve been obsessed with finding a mangosteen, though. But I think they’re out of season right now. I hear they speed up the metabolism, plus they look like cartoon fruit which is so intriguing! But alas, I have to wait for summer.

This isn’t a new fruit, but I thought I’d show you a picture of a dragon fruit. I like to slice them down the middle and use the rind as a bowl while I scoop out the innards!

Yum