Proving points and mistranslations

Last night after wandering around looking at clothes I didn't want to spend money on I found myself walking through the school gate for the second time. Whenever I pass the guards I always shout out something at them, usually in English. The two evening guards are my buddies. While the morning guards usually give me a nod or a smile or some simple hello, the night guards will shout something at me in Chinese. This time I decided to stop and ask them what they were doing (which was playing on their cell phones.) One of them asked me in Chinese if I wanted to chat for a little while. I had nothing better to do so, and figured it couldn't hurt to practice my Chinese. So we chatted. First about simple things, basically the same questions I get at English corner only in English not Chinese. We talked about my state and the weather, how long I'll be in China, we talked about snow also. He is from Henan which is near the middle of China but north enough that they get snow in the winter. He said that they normal got a few inches (he held his hand not far from the ground to emphasize this) to which I responded by raising my hand to the level of my knee to show how much snow Michigan gets on average. His eyes went wide. I found out his name was Dong jian dong and that his friends and the other guards call him Xiao dong which is a term used for when someone is younger (the first part of my name in Chinese means something different) so I proceeded to ask how old he was. Turns out, he's 22! A year younger than me. Ridiculous. The job of a guard just implies experience and patience and the ability to sit still for long periods of time, something that someone my age shouldn't be able to do. Then again come to think about it, I often do see the two night guards running around, making paper airplanes, or playing on their cell phones. Makes a little more sense now.

We continued the hilarity of asking and answering questions. I got the obvious "boyfriend question" but this time with a little more backing to it. He asked, if I didn't have a boyfriend, who were all the boys who I always see at the gate. I have a lot of guy friends, many of whom have shown up to meet me at the gate, this ranges from Brendon, to Ryan to Gavin to Ian to Randy. And I'm sure others will show up as the year progresses. I explained this to him to hopefully quell any rumors circling the guard houses that I'm dating half of China.

My Chinese is getting progressively better, but this is something that I only notice when I talk to people who have very little to NO grasp of English. It comes out from the recesses of my brain. I can also read and write better than I can speak (like many of my kids) so if I couldn't understand him he would write things down, which became a little frustrating because he was writing things that I COULD understand such as, "what will you do when you return to America?" What I liked about talking to him is that he spoke slowly and somehow figured out which words I knew and how to use them to explain things, leaving the difficult Chinese alone. When any of the other guards joined the conversation they would confuse me every time. Things that he said that there was no transtlation for or I just pointedly did not understand I would write down to either translate later or ask students what it meant. When I told him this he raised his eyebrows. I told him, that's their job, it's what they help me with. I could probably have a drink with this guy (which is what we ended the night talking about because a lot of his guard buddies were leaving to go get drinks). I found out that he lives on the 5th floor in my building. One of the last things he said to me in Chinese was that when I go back home they will miss me. "Ni hui lai Meiguo shenme shihou, women hui xiang ni." Which is probably incorrect but it's the jist. I'm glad to know that if I'm ever bored late at night at my school I have friends not far away.

I just learned that the English plays that the kids are doing Xmas eve will coincide with the Christmas party time. I don't care. I will just go later. I am going to watch those plays. They are going to be the cutest things in the entire world and it will be my favorite Christmas present.