Hilarious In Translation

We’re through the first week of classes after the break and ready for the rest of the semester. I’ve identified Listening Class as my weak point and realize I have a long way to go in that area. Trying to understand men is the most difficult because they tend to keep their mouths closed very tight and sort of mumble out of the backs of their throat. I’ve tried to watch more Chinese television (a real tough assignment I know) so we’ll see if that helps. My Speaking Class is the favorite class of most of my classmates. The teacher is a very jovial Mr. Wang (one of about a billion Wangs in this country, the most common surname) who makes class quite lively and comic with his constant berating of the Italian girls’ accents and historical digressions on Confucius. He diverts from the lesson plan more often than the other teachers and attempts to give us useful words that the textbooks may have omitted.

My death defying adventure of the week was riding on the back of my classmate’s moped on the way to lunch. As I’ve mentioned the traffic is quite helter skelter and yesterday was no exception. Fortunately or unfortunately he was a fairly experienced driver which meant he felt comfortable weaving in and out of lanes, speeding up then slamming on the brakes as we approached intersections, and passing on the inside and outside shoulders. There is a white metal fence that divides the highway and I don’t think he understood that my knees were forced outward further than his because my left kneecap was inches from drubbing each post Three Stooges style. Despite the gravity of it all I was too foolish to actually be scared; it all seemed to be happening on tv or in a video game (watch out for that old lady! Dodge the bus, dodge the bus!). I knew we had lost the game when a Russian sped by us on a sport bike doing a wheelie down the main thoroughfare, after which my classmate, who is French, turned toward me and said “crazy Russians”.

The above picture is a warning sign posted in our dormitory inside the laundry room. Most of their mistranslations are innocuous grammar errors but this one took me a second to decipher. Nevertheless I’ll keep my voice down to avoid any cascading sock-avalanches.