Awkward

Ok, I'll admit it...occasionally when I'm having a conversation in Mandarin I nod even if I don't completely understand what the person is saying. If I have no idea what they're talking about I usually tell them, but if I feel like I have a vague idea I just try to ride the wave of conversation....occasionally this causes some awkward fails though...enter recipe for disaster:

-me, having worked from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and exhausted/a bit stressed and distracted and having just taught an English Corner on politics and the American legislative system (hard enough to teach to Americans!)

-cute barista, who looks so cute that I have a mini panic-attack every time he opens his mouth...

Setting: nighttime in the coffee shop after English Corner

I am going to pay for my dinner. Usual exchange of pleasantries and payment, and I turn to walk away.

"Julie!" He calls after me. "I want to ask you..."

I walk back over. "Erm..." he looks slightly awkward and then proceeds to ask me about something. "Do you know...*something*" Now for whatever reason I cannot understand him very well (he speaks a sort of locally-influenced version of Mandarin anyway). However, I think that I have the jist of what he is saying. I answer what I think he is asking. I say, "I have a friend who should know." He says something else. I pull out another conversational trick, which is to ask "Why?" As in, "why do you ask?" Well, that failed because whatever he was saying, when I said that (with my best attempt at a cute grin) he turned red, grinned, and said, "No reason, I just feel that they're better to look at than the Chinese ones. Nevermind." At this point I was totally lost. I thought we were talking about cell phones, I really did. It occured to me later that I have no idea why he would ask me about cell phones. Fail. It turned out later that he was talking about design. sheji. not shouji. Listening fail. I still have no idea why he was asking me about design. But whatever. I salvaged the conversation by inviting him to eat Mexican food.

Intimacy I Didn't Want?

The saga of the cute barista continues...

A few weeks ago I told him he should drink chamomile tea because he said he couldn't stop sneezing. Well, I guess he decided to return the tea advice favor?

When I'm working on projects he usually brings me surprise drinks to try....last night he brought me a new kind of tea...I couldn't quite place the flavor. "What kind of tea is this? It's really good!"
"Oh, I'll bring you some more!" *comes back* "It's blueberry." Gives me a knowing smile.

I promptly google blueberry tea's uses in traditional Chinese medicine..used to recover strength annnd....for urinary issues/overactive bladder.

Does this mean that he noticed that I was getting up to pee every twenty minutes? I guess so....

I would like to offer my services to the businesses of China...just as someone to serve as an ear to run things by before opening a shop called, for instance, "LSD Cafe" (Little Sweet Dreams Cafe, but the abbreviation is LSD), or, this:

It certainly did lead to an interesting conversation with my local friend when I burst into laughter. Unfortunately she now looks at me and says this phrase whenever there are males she wants to demean around.

Swimming

If you have seen the movie "The Green Hornet", you may remember a scene where
Seth Rogen, as Britt Reid, and Jay Chou, as Kato, fight…the fight ends when they fall into the pool and Kato reveals that he can’t swim. To many people, that would be a “huh?” moment…a martial arts expert can’t swim? Really? But to any who have lived in China, you will know that it is actually extremely common for adults to not know how to swim. It’s becoming more common as a hobby, but many of my friends can’t swim, and their parents never had them take lessons because it was dangerous. If you don’t live around water, I suppose that makes sense, although it seems more dangerous to me that if you potentially ever fell into water you would die.

I have been attempting to teach a friend to swim in the evenings after she finishes work…I’m not gonna lie, it’s a bit humorous to watch her attempts…but she is learning. (a young boy we met last time was not as polite as me and did a rather mean but hilarious imitation of her flailing her
arms in the water). Slowly but surely she is getting to where she can at least sort of keep her head out of the water though, so I am happy that she potentially could survive in water without drowning. We'll keep it up, it's good for me to practice as well! I didn't want to go initially, after all, that pool is not heated and I am a subscriber of the Chinese philosophy "don't get cold, you will die", but I'm glad I have been going.

Another highlight of experiencing swimming as a foreigner is that you get to have the naked in front of a bunch of Chinese people locker room experience, which, surprisingly, I have become completely comfortable with. More on that another time.

Spotlight on my BFF

So one of my best friends here is "Vicky". She is sweet, outgoing, and pretty much the total opposite of me.

Anyways, some things I have learned from her:

-God gives us dreams for a reason, and we should always boldly follow those dreams, and work hard for them!

-It's always worth it to ask people for help/things that we want, the worst that can happen is they will say no.

-We should always count our blessings and let the little things go.

-Best friend earrings are cool. Yep, we bought two sets of earrings, and then each had one earring from each set.

A funny story: she came to stay at my hostel with me when I visited her in her hometown, because she wanted the experience. She made friends with everyone there almost immediately, she is so friendly (opposite of me, I am a people-watcher, not interacter right away typically).

Anyways, she is very much a go-getter. Anything I mention to her she makes happen. I mentioned I wanted to visit Jay Chou's new KTV. We were told it would be hard to find because they didn't want just anyone going there. I was like ok, no big deal. Not Vicky. She found it, then followed a group who had paid to be there and asked if we could go with them just to look around. Then she approached all the staff there and got them to take some awesome photos of us (I will have to share those later).

I mentioned to her that I thought the bartender at our hostel was cute. "You should talk to him." "No, I don't do that." (my version of flirting is just to stare someone down from afar, haha). So she marches up to him (he's in the middle of doing some accounting work) and starts talking. Soon she has found out the guy's life story, and talked me up as well in the process. "Have you met her? She is such an exceptional person." This conspiracy came to a head by her somehow discovering the guy was studying to go abroad to the U.S. and me helping him to study. "I'm an introvert." I said in way of explanation for why I hadn't introduced myself (I had already been acquainted with the other staff members). "Me too" He said grinning shyly. "But I could tell from watching you that you are really cool. Thanks for helping me." Vicky was practically beaming.

Anyways, I really enjoyed getting to visit her and meet her family... it's easy to understand why she is such a confident person, she has great parents! (That's Vicky, her mom, and I playing around in the photo below).

Xi'an

I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to visit a friend in her hometown, the ancient capital city of China, Xi'an.

Yes, Xi'an is famous for the Terracotta Warriors, and, in my opinion, this is THE must-see sight of China (more so than the Great Wall). I found it mind-blowing.

Each and every single one of these warriors has a different face, different details. Incredible. And also a slightly haunting reminder of the futility of trying to create for yourself a post-death kingdom.

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Aside from the Terracotta Warriors, I fell in love with Xi'an as a whole. So much history around, and amazzzziing local food! If I didn't love my local city so much, I would be happy to relocate there!

Post-Vacay

Vacation was quite the adventure...I thought I would do a few posts spotlighting different experiences.

One of my favorite parts was crossing off a certain item from my bucket list....staying at the Marina Bay Sands.

A while ago one of my fave Korean stars, Jung Ji Hoon, tweeted some pics of him and his backup dancers in an AMAZING pool..I knew I had to swim in it before I die.

While the skypark with the Infinity pool as it is called used to be open for the public to pay a fee and swim there, it is now open only to hotel guests...so, we had to stay there. It was quite the splurge, but, after staying in crappy hostels for the rest of the trip, it was worth it.

Ok, so it was cold, and my vampiric skin hadn't seen the light of day in a long time, so excuse the glowing whiteness.

Anyways, if you are ever in Singapore, it's worth skimping in other areas to splurge on this pool!