My Interpreter

Neo promised me in Shanghai that he would visit me in Beijing but I never actually thought this was going to happen.  Lucky for me Neo kept to his word and came to Beijing on Sunday, and brought along Sherry Wang, my Fudan partner!!!

Although Neo has been to Beijing many times, this was Sherry’s first time in the city.  They traveled to Qingdao before they came here and unfortunately they had standing only tickets for their 8 hour train from Qingdao to Beijing.  The consequence of this was that Sherry became very ill on the train and started vomiting.  She was basically immobile so I had to meet Neo at the metro stop in order to practically carry Sherry into a taxi and then to my apartment.  We nursed her back to health with some porridge and hot water.  (Porridge is the Chinese equivalent to Chicken soup, apparently).  The next day she was feeling fine and ready to explore.

My roommate, Courtney, was kind enough to move to the couch for the duration of Sherry’s stay which worked out really well.  It allowed for Sherry and me to have many late night talks (catching up).  It was just like in DC when we stayed up talking even though we were exhausted from the day’s activities.  Also since we shared a room, I got to hear all of Sherry’s sleep talking in Chinese, Shanghainese, and English.  It is quite amazing that she is trilingual even in her sleep.

Having Sherry in Beijing was awesome because it made my life so much easier.  No matter how well I am adjusting to life here, things are still really hard for me because of the language barrier.  With Sherry, simple tasks were actually simple again: ordering food, riding in a taxi, etc.  I tried to get Sherry to teach me some key words for ordering breakfast.  She repeated the word “egg” about ten times but every time I tried to mimic her, she told me I was saying “bomb”.  So, it looks like I might be eating bombs for breakfast.

Our first day together Neo suggested that we go to the military museum because when he went there last time, he took 400 pictures.  Sherry and I were a little less interested than Neo but we still enjoyed our day viewing the tanks, planes, and weapons.  I got an English headset because all the descriptions were in Chinese however only about 20% of the exhibits were programmed into the headset so it wasn’t that helpful. Still, I had a nice day learning about the Chinese military.

That night we went to Nanluogu Xiang for Keith’s 24^th surprise birthday party.  Ithzel planned the whole thing and all of Keith’s friends were there.  I met a lot of cool people; my favorite was a Chinese guy, Jeremy.  Jeremy had a strong English accent because all of his teachers had been from the UK; he also spent two years studying in France and is eager to go abroad again.  He invited me for a foot massage sometime but I have to say that people touching my feet freaks me out so I won’t ever get one of these massages.

Keith’s birthday party marked Sherry’s first time at a bar.  I convinced her to get a mojito and she loved it.  Since she will be a student next year at SUNY Buffalo I think it was a good first bar experience to ease her into the American college student culture.

Explore posts in the same categories: Uncategorized