While waiting in line at the grocery store one day, I notice that the old lady behind me has started to push up against me and is looking at all our groceries. She has a single bottle of soy sauce in her hand. I take advantage of the fact that she probably doesn’t understand English and say to Adam:
Sam: This lady is all up on my *ss!
Adam: I can see that. She’s giving me the craziest stink-eye I’ve ever seen.
Sam: I think she’s going to try to skip ahead of us with her one bottle of soy sauce.
Adam: Probably, let’s just see what happens.
So I’m like, all on the defensive ready to stand my ground, because stink-eye + pushing up against me = WTF? But when our turn comes up, Adam waves her ahead of us. And suddenly, she becomes the nicest old lady you’ve ever seen! The expression on her face said “Oh really? You’d do that for me? How sweet!” The stink-eye instantly turns into a mountain of smiles and xie xie’s. I’m glad we represented America well, but can’t help but feel we’ve been played.
Here is an interesting phone conversation between Adam and Cynthia Wei from Guilford Shanghai:
Here is an interesting phone conversation between Adam and Cynthia Wei from Guilford Shanghai:
Cynthia: Hello Adam, someone told me you don’t like dragons.
Adam: What?
Cynthia: I’m putting together a presentation and because next year is the year of the dragon, I was going to do a dragon theme. But if you don’t like dragons, I don’t have to do that.
Adam: Cynthia, I have no problem with dragons at all.
Cynthia: Are you sure?
Adam: I like dragons very much. I don’t know who would tell you that.
Cynthia: Ok good.
During one of our tutoring sessions, I asked QunFang to teach us food names. So we’re making a list and I ask how to say “mushroom”. She says it, then spells it out for me “ce suo”. I looked at it and said “Wait a minute, that means toilet”. And she says “Yes, it also means toilet”. Then she says there’s another way to say it “wei sheng jian” which I’m now thinking is different word for mushroom. But then she says “It also means toilet”. So now I’m thinking, how can there be two words that mean both mushroom AND toilet? That’s just way too coincidental. So I go to Google Translate and write “mushroom” in the box. It comes out “Mogu” so I show it to her. And she goes “Ohhhhh MUSHroom, I thought you said ‘washroom’ ”. Haha.
Adam and I wanted to buy index cards to make flashcards out of but we couldn’t find any at the Carrefour. They had a whole school supply section, but no index cards. So we asked QunFang about them and we had a little difficulty explaining to her what they were. Finally she said she might be able to find some for us. She e-mailed us a couple days later and said she found some in a small shop and she didn’t think we’d be able to find it so she bought them for us. They’re not really index cards (no lines on them) but they’ll do just fine. They’re business card sized and they come in this awesome packaging:
Adam and I wanted to buy index cards to make flashcards out of but we couldn’t find any at the Carrefour. They had a whole school supply section, but no index cards. So we asked QunFang about them and we had a little difficulty explaining to her what they were. Finally she said she might be able to find some for us. She e-mailed us a couple days later and said she found some in a small shop and she didn’t think we’d be able to find it so she bought them for us. They’re not really index cards (no lines on them) but they’ll do just fine. They’re business card sized and they come in this awesome packaging:
Instead of having lines on one side, there’s a very subtle picture of people windsurfing engraved onto each one.
I found mangosteens at the Carrefour on Sunday so I grabbed three. You could tell they were out of season but I was too excited. But when I opened one up, it was mostly rotten inside.
But the part that wasn’t rotten tasted very good. So now I’m even more excited for summer.To end this blog, here are a few pictures of sleepy Smudgie:
No comments:
Post a Comment