OKAY! Here we go... I have so much I want to share today! But i realize that some of these stories are the types of stories that you just can't appreciate unless you're here, but I'm trying to make them as real as possible because they are just the greatest.
First, just a quick interesting fact about China that I didn't know about until tonight. We went out to dinner tonight at a restaurant called Amethyst. The last group of teachers that were here LOVED it and they went to it quite often and gave a great review. So! We thought why not? and I will just say it really was quite fantastic. I had Thai, Red Curry for $3.50. And it was a good normal portion that you would get at any Thai restaurant in America. SO CHEAP and SO delicious. Anyways, because the waiters/waitresses over here don't get tipped, they don't really wait on you like they do there in America. So, we sat at our table for like 20 minutes just waiting before one of the girls remembered reading somewhere that you have to call them when you are ready. I don't know. Maybe that isn't new news to anyone else, but I thought it was interesting and it was hilarious for us because we were just chattin' have a great time and a half hour had passes while we were just waiting for the waitress to come back :)
Now the good stuff... oh my goodness! I just wish all of you were here with me so you could really understand. So, it's about 9:00 pm. We just finished dinner and we were waiting at the bus station back to Kaiyin. When we got there, there really weren't too many people at the stop but as we waited and waited more and more people started to gather. By the time the bus was there, we could see that it was clearly going to be packed on the bus. So at first once the bus stopped, because we're all trying to become "Chinese" :)we all started to push our way up to the front in order to get a seat. But after a second of trying we realized that there probably wouldn't be enough seats for us anyways and it might be fun to just stand in the isle. It might give us an opportunity to chat with the locals. We all just sorta hung out, and trailed onto the bus last. It was indeed packed! and we were definitely going to be standing in the isle. So Abby was standing right behind me, and just as the bus started moving the guy sitting in the seat next to her scooted over to the window seat opening a seat for one of us, so she sat down next to him. We smiled and said, "Xie, Xie." About 30 seconds passed and she looked over at him and said, "Ni hao ma?" which means "Hi, How are you?" which kind of took me by surprise and turned my head because we're always smiling and saying Ni hao (hello) to everyone but we don't usually say Ni hao ma? because that usually entails more conversing and questions and answers... all in Chinese which we do not speak well enough :) Anyways, she asks him and he just laughs. Like full out cracks up, he just throws back his head and laughs forever. So Abby and I just looked at eachother kinda confused but we're laughing to because we knew we said it right, but he didn't respond. Then a second later, Abby (and this says a lot about her personality because no one else would have kept going after that, ha but she did) tries again and says, "Wo shi meygoran",which translates to "I am American" and he looks at her and in broken, but pretty clear english says, "I know." HA. So again, we lost it and all of us were laughing, and by this time I'm standing in the aisle still and the two Chinese girls in the seats on the other side of me started to laugh and become interested. So he asks us, (still in very slow broken english), "you know...more chinese?" and we told him "yi dien dien" which means a little and so we just started having this conversation with this Chinese guy, Leo was his name and then Bou [Bow-woo] Michelle was her American name, the girl sitting across the aisle, started talking to us. Basically, we just laughed... A LOT and did a lot of communicating in Chinese and helped Leo and Bou with their english, and it made our day because we all just got so excited to learn the language and to be here with the natives and commuinicate with them. I LOVE IT! It was really hilarious, because every time we would say something in Chinese they would laugh and either nod their heads or teach us a better phrase to use instead of the one we used. It was so marveolous.
I wish I could show pictures of everything, Leo and Bou, but I can't :( Lo siento mucho.
Wierd thing that has happened the last few days, but incredibly interesting and I love it... I must talk about Tarah a lot because in the last two days, two of my roommates, Mikelle and Jillian have called me Tarah, then quickly corrected themselves and called me Sarah. And they were completely serious, not trying to be funny...they really truly got me confused with Tarah. HA! I loved it, it made me so happy :)
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