Safely back in SZ

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Home sweet Chinese home. Instead of understanding nothing I understand single words or phrases with no context...ultimate frustration. It's actually good to be back though.

We had a meeting this morning at school where the headmaster spoke for an hour an a half about the new semester. I understood nothing, but when I asked, everyone told me it was nothing important. I'm always amazed at how long Chinese people can give public speeches about nothing. I realize that it's because of my lack of listening comprehension and my colleagues disinterest in interpreting mundane details, but the frequency of these nothing speeches is still impressive. Anyways, Americans do the same thing...any of you UMW folks will remember the pregnant nothingness of Senator Warner's speech at graduation...well, nothing other than uninteresting babble about himself and multiple repetitions about how he was going to keep it short.

What was most fun about today was that it was the first time many of the Chinese teachers had seen each other since the New Year. Their excitement was infectious. Everyone seemed to have had a good break. The best part, though, was the red envelopes. I knew about the Chinese tradition of giving money in red envelopes to younger people at the New Year, but never thought they'd include me in it. Any of the teachers who are married gave envelopes to those of us who are yet to tie the knot...and although only about half the teachers included me, I still racked it in! What a nice surprise!

A bunch of the teachers and I then went to a restaurant called Maojia-- Mao's home. It was spicy Hunan food-- fish, white chili, chicken soup, pig tails and nuts, and Chairman Mao's own personal favorite: hong shao rou. It was these stalky things with salty bits of fat...pork, I think? and a sweet/cinnamony sauce. I liked it about as much as I like the results of Mao's policies. Can I publish that on the internet? I guess I could say I liked it about as much as I liked the pig tails. I miss tasty pho and Khmer food already. Good things.

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Comments

[AP]

I'm sorry you ate pig tails and nuts. That sounds seriously awful. Also, I intend to steal the phrase "pregnant nothingness."