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| Chatting with folks in Chinese is a fantastic exercise in humility. Last weekend I was up in Jiangyou, and I was so impressed with the way Eunice could chat away in Chinese. She even translated!
My tutor and I are working steadily. I'm getting into Song Dynasty poems and Chin-teen pop. Good stuff. She's also clever enough that by listening to some of my favorite western singers (eg, Leonard Cohen, David Wilcox, etc) she recommended a few Chinese artists more to my tastes (eg, Xu Wei). Wonderful! Next phase is getting some TV shows to watch.
The thing is, my tongue isn't very cooperative. Words jumble out that have no resemblence to the finely crafted phrase I feel is tucked away somewhere in my head. | | |
| I found out this morning that my high school mentor, Patrick, died on Saturday. I hadn't spoken directly to Patrick since 1999, when I introduced my wife to him. We sent him newsletters and Christmas cards over the years, but no direct contact.
I have known that he was going to die sooner rather than later, cancer, but the certainty of death is always a shock. I pray his wife and daughters are surrounded by love.
Patrick gave me a lot (trust, vision, confidence, guidance, foreign movies, sculpting, gourmet meals, Asti, Cleopatra, Bostonians, the list could go on), and he kept my secrets. He was a little screwed up, too, but aren't we all. | | |
| Our apt complex, Wanke, is a great place to live. It's full of interesting people. I've been suprised a few times to bump into someone and have them casually chat in English. One of the most interesting, though brief, experiences was when an old man, who looked worn but dignified saw me coming toward him. I was almost at the door of our building, and he was walking toward me. He looked at me, smiled and said, "Good afternoon" in a voice that came from London.
The holidays here mean lots of kids are back from school, and many of the residents aren't at work. There was a little bit of an exodus. Folks going on holiday and all that. But then there's another group, these are the folks who are happy to do nothing but relax. The car lot is full of cars from other parts of Sichuan, and a lot of these folks are either visiting family or coming home from the their jobs elsewhere. As I walk around, I run into them. Huddles of parents chatting about their kids. Men, professional men, with no cellphones pressed to their ear. You can see the relaxation. People just taking in the gardens here.
Of course, most of these folks have cars, so they zoom off for an evening or day of fun when they get bored, but I like being able to see them with their hair, or cellphones, down. | | |
| We've been enjoying our new apt immensely. Even though we are not unpacked and still have furniture to buy, it feels great to be in "our" space. We've had a few colleagues over for dinner, and it has been nice to see them relax and "stay a while" since there is more space for them to actually relax. I guess that proves that guests prefer sofas to folding chairs.
Some friends from Beijing are coming through town this weekend, so this may be our first "overnight" guests. Given that we lived with them for a year while we were studying Chinese, I'm really hoping we can convince them to stay a while. Now, where will they sleep??? | | |
| We got back to Chengdu on Sunday. Thanks to a helpful flight attendant, we were able to check all our bags with only a small surchage, granted, the surchage has increased 400% since I was last charged for overweight bags, but that's the the thing with oil economies...
Our flight over was long and uneventful. I carried a shower-rod all the way from Pensacola only to forget it at the airport in Beijing... 36 hours in airports and the like will do that to you.
Since getting to Chengdu we've been cleaning our place which had accuumulated 10 weeks of dust. We're also unpacking in the process which makes things fun. Today we're supposed to get our phone connected, we'll see how that goes. Apparently it is quite an ordeal to put in an extra phone plug-thing-a-ma-jigger. | | |
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