Vitamins and Miserables
Can you believe it’s already been a month since I left? Unfortunately, the one-month mark is usually when everything starts to irritate you. Bingo. When I was in Hefei with ILP, I found the first month to be fun, new, and exciting. The second and third months, however, were difficult; I was sick of everything and couldn’t wait to go home. But by the fourth month, I had settled into things and really liked where I was.
If history is any indication, I have a lot to look forward to come October. And it won’t be so hot by then, either. It’s really, really hot. I went to my Star apartment today to drop some things off, and I found my Flinstone vitamins in an awful state. Look what the humidity did to them! These used to be orange:
Yesterday was World English’s one-year anniversary. They had a dinner party and asked the foreign teachers to perform something. We played a couple improvisational games a la Whose Line is it Anyway. I have never seen so many blank faces in my life. The only people laughing were the foreigners up on stage. Well, at least we had fun.
On the flipside, Chinese people probably find my blank stares just as obnoxious. There are some days where I’m on fire, where everybody I talk to says exactly what I understand and know how to reply to. But then there are days where the only thing I can make any sense of is “Ni hao.”
Interestingly, Chinese people don’t always understand each other, either. While I was looking for a cell phone with one of the Chinese tutors, another customer came up next to us and started talking to the vendor. The tutor leaned over to me and said, “I don’t know what that guy is saying. He is from a different city.”
I knew there were many different dialects in Chinese, but I didn’t think it was so severe. Liyang is only an hour and a half from Changzhou, and yet people from Changzhou have a hard time following a conversation between two people from Liyang. That’s why many TV channels provide subtitles, so the people who can’t understand the dialect can still read what’s going on.
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Response to “Vitamins and Miserables”
Comments RSS Feed – All CommentsJR — 21 July 2008 @ 9:18 am
It seems like just yesterday we were on a cruise. Hard to believe it’s already been a month. That’s interesting about the language barrier between different dialects, I had no idea.
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