Through the eyes of another

I thought I'd share some snippets from my friends' blogs who are in the BYUI group in China. I have a really bad memory, so I fail to mention a lot of the funny stories and situations we run into. So here are a few as told by...

Adam:

"Before arriving at Carrefour that afternoon, the idea of buying a pet crab had never crossed our minds. It was just one of those decisions you make at the spur of the moment. The salesman was rather confused when I asked him what I should feed it. Haha He wasn’t overly helpful. Minutes later we were walking out of Carrefour with a live crab in a plastic bag.

It wasn’t long before the word got around about our pet, and everyone wanted to see our crab scuttle across the shower floor and blow bubbles from his mouth. I don’t think any crab has ever been more loved. I particularly remember the day our cleaning lady first found out we had a crab. Coming back to my room after class I heard her call out to me from up the hall:

Lady: Hey! What’s that crab doing in your bathroom?! It scared me half to death this morning! You know you’re not allowed to have pets!
Me: That’s not a pet… that’s our dinner.
Lady: Dinner?! And how are you planning to cook that?! (We don’t have stoves or ovens in our dorms.)
……... (Responding with a straight face)
Me: Microwave.
Lady: Microwave!? You’re going to cook it in the microwave!?
Me: What can I say? I like my seafood to be fresh."

"A dozen street vendors have set up carts outside the gates of our school, selling a variety of different Chinese xiaochi. I don’t really notice as much anymore, but sometimes I just have to question how sanitary the food we are eating really is. These people cooking our food don’t wear gloves or hairnets like you would see in the United States. Sometimes I just want to ask if they wash their hands or utensil with soap? How long has that been sitting out for? Is that cigarette ash floating in my soup? But then again, sometimes it's better not to know...

I’m to the point that I won’t eat anything that I haven’t seen cooked. While waiting for our sandwich today, we watched as the man pulled raw chicken out of a plastic grocery bag hanging from the side of his cart and tossed it into the grease. (He had no refrigeration, not even a cooler.) Turning to Josh: "Should that worry me? Yeah, probably. Does it worry me? A little. Having seen that, will I still be back her for lunch tomorrow? Yup...""

Tina:

"So we’ll start out with this one. Once upon a time, Josh was in the Subway, chatting away with some random guy, and this is about how the conversation mishap ended up sounding when translated from Chinese:

Josh: So what’s your favorite food?
Random man on the subway: I like seafood.
Josh: Huh? What’s that?
Random man: (Looking astounded) It’s food from the sea.
Josh: I don’t know what that is.
--Awkward pause--
Josh: Well, this is our stop. We’ll see you later!"

"Once upon a time, Josh was leaning against the accordion-like connection in the center of an extra-long bus. There was a sign right above him that read, in characters, DO NOT SIT. The bus turns a corner and, of course, he got pinched. He jumped up, “ai-yah!” and Adam commented to the man sitting next to him, nodding toward Josh, “he’s French.”

“Ohhhh,” the Chinese man nodded, as if everything suddenly made sense.
I’m thinking: What?"

"There’s this really good xiaochi where we like to get baozi and soup. Their hundun tang, dumpling soup, is tebie hao,especially good. One night, after checking with Adam to find out how to say ‘soup,’ he walked up to the lady and asked for “jiaozi tong” instead of asking for “jiaozi tang.”

“Excuse me, I want a bowl of pain.”"

"Sometimes we’ve got some crazy Chinglish things that pop out in our conversations. Here are a few quick ones:

Adam: “How lei are you?”
Various people: “Let’s go chi some fan.”
Adam: “Tomorrow is your birthday is tomorrow?” (mixing up word order but realizing it halfway through the sentence—and trying to fix it)
Josh: “I was kai wan xiao-ing.”
Brother Paul: “Don’t go xiexie-ing all over the place.”
Various people: “Listen. My duzi isn’t happy. Laduzi.”
Me: “I really like your de thoughts on that.” (mixing up how to make a word possessive)
Various People: “Let’s shang this che.”
Dana: “I went with MaiSee [to eat] but she qingke-ed.”
Adam: “She’s such a da mafang. You know what I’m saying?”
Adam and Josh: “Is it easier to bao a jiaozi or to jiaosomeone to bao a baozi?”"

(at the Temple of Heaven) "We moved on to the last area, which is comprised of three rings. There was a large, outer, circular court, a level of steps and a second, circular court, and the top circular court is where most of the tourists were gathering. Adam and I went straight to the top and started doing the polka through the crowd. Then we moved to the second ring and taught everyone else in our group how to polka (the tourists all leaned against the railings from the top ring and watched).

Yeah, I’m that cool. I’ve done the polka at the Temple of Heaven."

Abby:

"It’s funny how people perceive Americans. Adam was talking to a Chinese guy on the subway, and the Chinese guy asked, “In America, does everyone carry around guns all the time?” Adam was like, “What?” The guy continued to explain that’s what they see on American TV shows so he thought that all American’s carry guns with them everywhere they go.

We asked the Korean’s in our class what the English language sounded like to them when they hear American’s talking to each other. They said that we always sound REALLY excited!"

"So, there I was talking to this guy on the subway. He had kind of a strong accent that was hard to understand. My friend Adam, who served a mission in Taiwan, Chinese speaking, was listening to my conversation to see how well I would do on my own. He later told me what the translation was of our conversation and what the guy said to me. This how it went. We will call the guy on the subway “Joe.”

Me: Have you eaten Beijing Duck? (Beijing is famous for their duck)

Joe: Oh, yeah it’s really good.

Me: Do you like it?

Joe: Yeah, have you tried it?

Me: I like it.

Joe: But have you tried it?

Me: I like it.

Joe: Ok, so you’ve tried it?

Me: (I just shook my head at this point, because I had no idea why he kept asking me what I thought was, “Do you like it?” And I also realized that I didn’t know why I was telling him that I liked it, because I actually haven’t even tried it. We got to our stop, and Adam had told me that he wasn’t asking me if I liked it.)"

"This conversation took place with Josh and a Chinese guy on the subway, but Adam and I were listening. We’ll call the guy he was talking to “Ted.” So Ted and Josh were talking for a short time and Josh was able to carry on a conversation with him pretty well, and then…

Ted: Ni shuo han yu shuo de hen hao. (Your Chinese is very good)

Josh: huh?

Ted: Ni shuo han yu shuo de hen hao. (Your Chinese is very good)

Josh: Wo ting bu dong. (I don’t understand)"

"Yesterday I tried to start up a conversation with a guy, and I didn't understand what he said back to me. I turned to my friend Tina and said, “Do you know what he just said?” She said, “Yeah, he said,“You shouldn't be talking to me in Chinese, because you have no idea what I am saying back.” Yep, I guess he was slightly right about that one."

Daddyyy and shopping!

I haven’t been very good at keeping my blog updated, have I?

Dad was in town this week! So I got to see him a few times. On Tuesday, he came to my school and we went to lunch at a local restaurant. After, we went to the clothes market across from the zoo. We just walked through and looked at stuff but didn’t buy anything. But we did get to eat at McDonalds! It definitely wasn’t as good as American McDonalds, but it was still really good to have a break from Chinese food.

On Friday morning I got to see him again. We went took a bus and a subway to Summer Palace. It was kind of funny because we weren’t exactly sure which stop to get off the subway, so we asked someone, and when we got off at the right stop, I saw a sign that had a list of where each exit lead to. I saw “颐和园”listed as being out exit C. So I told dad, “look, it says Summer Palace is out exit C.” So he looked at the sign and said “that doesn’t say Summer Palace, that says yijakipwaebmx.” How lucky it was for dad to be with someone who could read Chinese ;)

We went out exit c and made our way to be big park. We got tickets and went in. It was so beautiful! Very scenic. I don’t really know how else to describe it. We walked around there for a bit and I took lots of pictures (but blogger hasn’t been letting me upload any pictures, which is why all of these recent entries haven’t had any). After a while, my feet hurt really bad, so we went back to my school and I took him to dinner at another local restaurant. And then we split ways.

Later that night I thought I would be going to dinner with my class. But that morning we had a really big test, so none of us got a chance to talk to each other. I thought Rungui would have called me at 5 if they were going, but I didn’t get a call. And I had been invited to go with some people from BYUI group to an Italian restaurant, so when no one called, I went with them instead. Sam (the guy from Iraq) led us. We took a bus all the way there, it was like a 40 minute ride. I’m pretty sure it was near the place dad’s hotel was. The area was called Sanlitun and it was really really really cool. I can’t even express how much I loved the area. I just loved how it looked. It was so modern looking—futuristic even! I tried to take some pictures, but my camera failed as taking pictures at night. But maybe we’ll go there again some time and I can try again. Well, we ate at an Italian restaurant there, and it was surprisingly really good, especially because I don’t usually like Italian food.

Today me and Abby went back to that market by the zoo. This time I bought some jeans, two shirts, a vest, and a scarf. It was such an amazing feeling to buy such pretty clothes for so cheap! I had so much fun! Haha. Except I think the jeans I got are a little too small, but I’ve also gained quite a bit of weight since I got here. Small jeans will just be more incentive to make me lose those pounds. But I tried on the other things I got, and I really like them :D

同学和朋友

Last night Xu Rungui came over to study. We had an assignment to make and memorize a dialogue due the next day. So I thought he’d come over for like half an hour just to write it. But we wrote it and practiced it, and then he just got out his other books and started studying. It was good though, because it forced me to study too. He ended up staying over for about 4 hours, just studying and hanging out. At one point he took out his mp3 player and speakers and started quizzing me on KPop songs. He’d play one and ask if I knew it, and when I got excited and started singing along with it he’d always shout “啊!你是哪国人??!” which roughly translates to “what country are you from??!” Along with knowing the songs, I also know parts of most dances, so I’d start doing part of it in my seat, and he’d start doing it too. And when “Tell Me” by Wondergirls played, without even saying anything we both got up and did the whole first dance section, hahahaha. It was really fun. I’ve never really had a friend who I could really chat about KPop with. Though I guess it’s pretty normal for Koreans to know about their own pop culture, so it’s no surprise that he knows all these songs and dances too.

I’m also becoming better friends with the other people I sit by in class. Xu Rungui always sits next to me, and then in front of us are Kim Wuram and Han Jinghao. All three are Korean, so they often talk to each other in Korean. I nicknamed Han Jinghao “小탑” (Little TOP) because he looks a lot like my favorite celebrity, TOP. When I told him that he was really surprised and denied it, but he really does look like him! So I told him to rap for me, and he looked down for a second, thinking. And then he looked up and did the signature TOP finger-wiggle move. Then he got all embarrassed and had to look away. Haha, silly shy Koreans! I also nicknamed Kim Wuram “Agi Oppa”. Agi means baby in Korean, and “oppa” is a term that Korean girls use when referring to guys who are older than them. The reason I chose “baby” is because there’s a Korean movie I liked called “Baby&Me” where the baby’s name is Wuram. And he’s Korean so of course he knows of the movie, so he got the joke. And then I named Xu Rungui “小孩子” which means “little kid”. I don’t really remember why, but it has something to do with something I misheard him say yesterday.

Today me, Abby, and Tina went to that supermarket place with the massage chairs again. I always forget what it’s called. I stocked up on some instant noodles, since the only “cooking supplies” we have is a fossit in the laundry room that we can get hot water out of. Abby and Tina wanted to buy a crab, since apparently Adam and Josh have been keeping a pet crab in their bathroom (what the random??) and they thought he needed a friend. Hahaha. I guess they got theirs for 3kuai, so we assumed the one we got wouldn’t be more than 6. But then after we got it bagged and weighed, as we were walking away Abby asked how much it ended up being. Tina looked at the bag and saw that it was 36kuai. So we they were like “WHAT DO WE DO?” because we didn’t want to buy a 36kuai crab. So they took it back. Abby tried to explain why they didn’t want it, but the guy was really confused trying to understand. So finally she just said “我不要。”(meaning “I don’t want it”) and he was like ohhhhhh, no problem. So we bought our stuff and took the super crowded and smelly bus home. I stopped at the little corner restaurant and got some chao mian for dinner, while Abby and Tina ate the bread they got. It’s becoming much less stressful to order food, now that I’ve learned a little more food-related vocabulary, and am just over-all more comfortable with Chinese.

中秋节

Yesterday was 中秋节(Zhongqiujie), China’s Mid-Autumn Festival. We didn’t have classes, so we decided we needed to go out and do something fun. Me, Abby, Adam, Josh, Tina, Brett, and Gidianny went to the Temple of Heaven together. I didn’t really know what to expect. I hadn’t even seen pictures of it really. So I was blown away at how big it was. It had a few different sections, and the path to each section was a beautiful walkway. At one point, we got attacked by some nationals demanding to take pictures with us. So we got stuck there for a few minutes until Adam forcefully dragged us out because we needed to move on before we lost the daylight.
When we got to the next section though, a small group of older people wanted a picture with us as well. But that one was much quicker. In that section, we decided it would be cool to take some jumping pictures. So we went to a building on the side and jumped off of the wall, while Brett crouched next to the wall and angled the camera so it got the really pretty building in the background.The next section was the Echo Wall. It’s a circular wall and you can stand at one side while someone else stands on the opposite side (probably like 75m away?) and talk and hear each other. Then in the next section, Tina and Adam wanted to teach us how to polka??? So they taught us all, while all the Chinese people watched us and laughed and recorded us and took pictures. And then after we learned, we went up to the top part and Tina, Josh, Adam and Abby danced in the middle of everyone while I recorded. The people around us weren’t quite sure what to think…
On the way out, we ran into a guy who was training to run a marathon. It turns out he’s run the Great Wall marathon before. Josh and Adam decided they wanted to race him and his friend, so they did. So random! But so funny, I love it! Josh won and Adam came in second. Then we just made our way home. We stopped at 勿美(wumei), the local store, to buy some 月饼(yuebing) Moon Cakes. It’s tradition to eat them during 中秋节, and we’re Chinese now!
Classes have been really good. In the beginning, I teased Xu Rungui about his pretty sister. But now he teases me about my boyfriend. I used to say “徐润闺的妹妹挺漂亮的。”(Xu Rungui’s sister is very pretty). But now he says　“文凯丽的男朋友挺帅的。“ (Kayli’s boyfriend is very handsome). And today we were learning how to use “什么的” which basically means “etc”. When it was my turn to give an example I said “冰箱里咖啡，茶，可乐，什么的都有” (Inside the fridge, there’s coffee, tea, soda, etc.), and the teacher was like yay that works, good job! And then it was Rungui’s turn, so he said “文凯丽的脑子里男朋友，男朋友，男朋友什么的都有” (Inside Kayli’s head, there’s boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend, etc). I laughed soooo hard. But the teacher was like …no that doesn’t work. Hahaha.
Just a few minutes ago our cleaning lady came in. We never really talked to her before, but Abby decided to ask her name. Her name is Hai Yan, and she’s 21 years old! I thought she was much older. We chatted with her as she changed our seats. She was very talkative once we got her started. I was surprised though how much I was able to understand, and was actually able to respond most of the time. When we ride subways and things, I’m always too scared to talk to anyone because I don’t think I’ll be able to understand them. But having classes that are completely in Chinese have really helped me to catch the jist of what someone is talking about. So even if I don’t understand everything, I can usually catch key words and piece together the subject. I’m so happy to be learning!

District Conference

I guess it’s been about a week since I last updated. Once classes started up, I stopped going out and doing much. Most of my days just consist of class, studying, and keeping caught up with people back home.
On Friday though, my class all went out to lunch at a place called Big Pizza. It’s like an American buffet, and it was really good. Apparently we might be making class lunches a weekly thing, because we have tests every Friday, and Xu Rungui wants everyone to celebrate finishing the test haha. It was really fun to hang out with everyone. I love my class!

Later that day me, Abby, Josh, Adam, Ben and Kurt went to a big Walmart like supermarket. I forget what it’s called though.
The reason people wanted to go was because of the amazing massage chairs. I was a little reluctant to believe how great they were, since most of the massage chairs I’ve been in were uncomfortable and painful. But these were more gentle and felt super duper nice. So we all just parked it in the chairs for like twenty minutes.

After the supermarket, we came back to the dorms. Josh, Adam and Ben came to our room and we all watched the Green Lantern. I’d seen that movie like an accumulated million times before, so I was easily distracted with other things (like talking to Chris ^^).
It was a really fun time, though. We were helping set Abby up with hotspot shield and helping Adam set up a blog. Abby was really tired though, and she started acting like a drunk person. We had a lot of fun teasing her, and she was really funny.

And then on Saturday night, we went to the adult session of district conference. Sam, Amber’s Muslim friend, came with us. Earlier in the week, he had taken a bunch of people from our group to see a Mosque, but I had class during the time they went so I couldn’t go.
The conference was good. One of the members of the 70 told a lot of really funny stories about funny things his kids say. It’s a little frustrating though how long it takes to get to the church building. Taking the subway route, it’s an hour and a half each way, so getting to church and back eats up three hours of the day.

韩国隔壁的人

Last night, a big group of us went to a really cool performance. I’m not sure what to call it, but it was like Chinese ballet. It was so incredible. None of us really expected a whole lot, we only went because the ward got us a bunch of free tickets. But we were all completely blown away. It was a story about the Flower Goddess, a Poppy, and a Peony. According to Seth (a history major), it was an allegory about the Opium Wars, with the Peony representing China, the Poppy as Britain, and the Flower Goddess representing the struggle for peace. It was an absolutely beautiful performance.

Amber had invited a guy from her class to come along with us. His name was Sam and he’s from Iraq. He’s been in Beijing for 4 months, so he was able to lead to us to theater.

After the performance, about half of the group split off to go home. But I was super starving, so I went with the group that wanted to get a late dinner.

Rather than taking the subway back, we just took a bus the whole way, which was much more relaxing because it was so late at night that we could actually sit in seats. At one point, these two guys got on, and one of them was super drunk. He sat across from me, and after a few minutes, opened the window and started vomiting like a waterfall. I was surprised one person’s stomach could even hold that much liquid. It smelled like pure alcohol as well, you could smell it really strongly. It didn’t really bother me to see, but when I looked around, all of the girls in the group looked totally horrified. I thought about offering him a piece of gum, but decided he would probably just throw up again and lose it.

We got home just past midnight. Abby was already asleep, but I stayed up a few more hours talking online.

Today we went to our neighbors’ dorm room for lunch. We met them in the hall yesterday and they invited us to eat with them. They’re all Korean and don’t really speak much English, so we have to communicate with each other in Chinese. It was really interesting. I was surprised how well we were able to communicate! They even gave us Korean names, and we gave them English names. They named me Kim Sarang and Abby is Kim Hanneul. And we named them Ginger, Jane, Melanie, Hannah and Julie.

So we had Korean food with them and it was super yummy.

Afterwards, I came home, studied a little, took a nap, and then did my homework.

中文课

I’ve got a few days worth of classes under my belt, and I’m finally feeling confident. The first day went completely over my head. I was out of practice with Chinese, and the teachers ONLY spoke Chinese, no English whatsoever. So it would go completely over my head.
But now I’m remembering what I learned before, and adding on the new things that we’ve been studying. I’m getting used to hearing Chinese all the time, and I’m learning how to piece things together more effectively.
Also, I’ve been making friends. Well, I haven’t really made new ones since my last update, but the bonds are growing! I’ve been sitting by Tina (she’s with the BYUI group) for the last two days. Federico usually sits behind us. And Xu Rungui usually sits near us. Whenever I see either of them around the campus, we always say hi. The first time that I sat by Rungui (Elric), we had to ask each other questions in Chinese, and then introduce each other to the class. He showed me a picture of his little sister, and she was super pretty. So while everyone else was introducing their partners, saying their name, where they were from, etc, I introduced him as “这是徐闰圭。他的妹妹非常漂亮!””This is Xu Rungui. His little sister is extremely beautiful!” It got a good laugh out of the class, and now we all kind of tease him with it. Today we were learning to use the sentence structure 挺。。。的, which means something is “quite” something (hard to explain in English). The teacher was asking for example sentences from everyone, so for my turn I said “徐闰圭的妹妹挺漂亮的。“ “Xu Rungui’s little sister is quite beautiful.” I started something, and it’ll probably stick with him for the rest of the semester :P

Brandon and Theo (from BYUI) transferred into our class. They were originally in 一本上，the lower level. So they came to 一本下, the upper level (the one I’m in). So now us 美国人 all sit together. We kind of talk a lot, which probably isn’t a good thing. But at least we always talk to each other in Chinese, so the teacher can’t yell at us for speaking English. It’s really fun to sit by them, as we all tease and make fun of each other in Chinese.