I forgot to report an interesting conversation with a Chinese PE teacher on one of my commutes. When I said I was from Utah, he said, “I know about Utah…the terrible tragedy of the insects.” He explained how the birds ate the locusts (I couldn’t convince him that they were crickets), and told me he had read about it in his textbook! Andrea reported that her guide in Xian also knew the story. I find that surprising.
Today is a national holiday. No one is working except me, and I’m grading 42 final exam papers. It’s going slowly. We were served the special holiday food at breakfast (stuff wrapped in leaves to commemorate the food that was thrown into the river to feed the hero who had commited suicide.)
I watched a granny helping her grandson to pee through his slit pants. Instead of choosing a tree or bush, which abound all over this campus, she had him stand on the porch and pee against the door of the foreign students’ building. I really don’t think she was making a statement, but I thought it an odd choice of location.
Well, I’ve stalled long enough…back to the test papers. So far the results are what I expected, but I’ve been given pretty strict instructions about the final grades.
Oh, one more thing. At the local fruit stand where I get my bananas, they now have cherries and strawberries. I was picking out some strawberries this morning, and the women got mad at me for picking out the ripe ones. She scooped them off the scale and threw them back into a bowl and yelled that I had to buy the whole thing. Since I’m leaving in the morning, I didn’t want that many. I just said “Duibuqi,” and she softened and told me I was forgiven. A nearby guard was impressed with my Chinese. Mind you, I could never think of the right word or phrase when I was here before, but the oddest words keep coming to mind at the appropriate times. Sometimes I even amaze myself! (It proves that my long-term memory is better than my short-term.)
Zaijian