Last night, just finished my cleansing session in The Fridge (aka my bathroom) when I received an SMS from Her (The Waitress). It contained only the word “now”. But that was enough for me to realise that she was on-line.
It took me several nanoseconds to ponder wether or not I should laboriously re-dress myself with the mandatory 5 layers, scarf and beany before braving the cold to run across the prairie to my office.
I got to the office only to have to wait in-line for my co-worker who was working it on QQ. Following what felt like forever, I had my turn. I managed to connect with her (on all sorts of levels) and we had some famously colourful, typed conversation, with the help of good old Bablefish, of course.
Then I tried my luck and initiated a video-chat, even though I have no video device. Turns out, neither does she. But she did have audio, so I first had to dash down the 4 floors of my office, up the 3 of my dorm, down the 3 of my dorm and back up 4 to my office. All in a whisper.
We then proceeded, to my surprise, to have a surrealistically fluent conversation. Obviously the pressures of infatuation stimulates the memory region, because I had total recall of lessons 1 through 15 of my Chinesepod.com adventure.
So, with a girl who knows little English beyond “welcome back”, and I mean very, very little, I managed to chit-chat for a good half hour AND invite her to dinner. Ha! Of course, following the invitation I did wonder how we would manage dinner conversation, but that was this evening’s problem.
Because we had a spat of trouble communicating WHERE to meet, I just went to The Restaurant and picked her up as her shift finished. We could manage to arrange that. We took the 30 odd minute bus trip to the best (only) restaurant I could remember, as we couldn’t quite understand each other as to WHERE to eat. Again, we managed some casual chit-chat on the bus, most notably about what she did and did not like to eat. After finally committing the word for “like” (xi huan) to memory, I have found a million uses for it.
At the restaurant, for the sake of expedience, she did the ordering. I could have ordered, because basic restaurant ordering was also covered in those fabulous lessons, but I thought I’d save that for impressing her on the next date.
Again, the conversation was surprisingly (surprising because of my extremely elementary level of Chinese) flowing, but a fair bit of staring at the pleasant features of her beautiful face was engaged in (an not so much due to lack of ability, mind you). Staring at her was in fact even more enchanting through the mist created by the hot-pot (chaffing dish?) we were enjoying on this very cold Shiyan night. 2 hours later, might I add, very standard for a steamboat dinner, we decided to take the bus home.
My stop was near the restaurant, so I bid her farewell (in Chinese, of course) and asked her to SMS when she got home (in English, which didn’t work as I had to SMS her after some time to find out if she’s ok). After the mentioned SMS she phoned me, and we had a nice chat – and arranged another rendezvous for tomorrow night.
If it wasn’t for the fact that I was now nearly asleep in my seat, I would cram in lessons 16 through 65, but the two early mornings in a row are catching up with me.
For the first time in the months I have been here in Shiyan, I am going to bed becuase I feel sleepy, not because of habit. My dreams will be sweet.