More Tingly Than Hot

My computer is back up and running (for now), but I never figured out what caused it to crash in the first place so we’ll see how long it lasts. The last couple of days I have had a lot more interaction with Chinese people other than my teachers thanks mostly to my new language partner and my high tolerance for spicy foods.

Last week I had my first session with my language partner, an energetic 24-year old Chinese girl named Bi Hui Hui. We have a Chinese tutor session for an hour and then I help her with English for an hour, although we don’t always work on English for the whole hour because she thinks her English isn’t very good and says she gets embarrassed, even though my Chinese isn’t half as good as her English. Either way I have really benefited from our meetings (we met four times last week and once already this week) and hope that she will continue to want to meet throughout the rest of the semester. I really get to practice on normal everyday situations and I’m always asking her about encounters I have and what phrases and expressions I should have used. It’s also the most exposure I get to a Chinese person as our talks have been more candid than I would have thought because of the language barrier. But she has been super nice and even got her boyfriend to help me work on my computer last week when it wasn’t working and is very patient with me while I butcher her language. She really likes to sing and is taking part in a campus wide karaoke competition on Friday which I have hinted at attending even though she assures me it won’t be very interesting.

Over the weekend I was dining at the dumpling restaurant that I often frequent when I was able to strike up a conversation with a broad-faced Chinese man sitting across from me with a badminton racquet and a gruff voice. Through the smell of the vinegar and soy sauces splashed on the tables, the steam and sweat rising from the tiny, bustling kitchen area, and the strong aroma of the egg and chives soup that dotted most of the tables, he caught a whiff of the spoonfuls of crushed pepper I was shoveling into my dipping bowl. He told me that I must really like hot food and then asked me where I was from. I told him I was an American and we switched between English and Chinese while discussing how long I had been studying and how long I was staying. When he had finished he stood up and said goodbye and evidently was too distracted to remember to pay for his meal. I didn’t notice either until the petite but stern owner briskly scurried past me and out into the hall looking for the alleged malefactor while mumbling under her breath. About 30 seconds later she walked back into the room shaking her head and smiling and counting her money.

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