BeyondmoreThingsILike

My Chinese Family

Well the other day I was roaming the streets of Zheng Zhou. I walked into a shop and started talking to the shop owners. It was the owner and his niece (mighty cute niece). I don’t speak Chinese and they don’t speak English. Somehow we ended up sitting in front of a computer for at least 3 hours having a “translated” conversation. We really connected. I felt so close to these people even though we were only communicating through body language and translations of what each other typed. Well the owner asked me to come by today so he could treat me to some Hainan treats.  I guess that meant local Hainan food.

I showed up on time and his beautiful niece was waiting for me at the door with a big smile on her face.  He also asked me help his daughter with English.  She’s 11 and is the sweetest kid I’ve ever met.  She’s also a musical prodigy.  She plays an ancient Chinese instrument that is similar to a harp. 

We went out to eat.  The food was amazing!  It was mostly noodles but that makes it sound too simple.  Put it this way, everyone’s nose was running and our faces were red.  We used a lot of tissue wiping the sweat from our faces during the meal.  It was awesome!

Afterwards we went back to the shop where I talked to them for a few hours.  I helped his daughter with her English homework and gave her some additional assignments to help her improve her English.  I’m taking her on as a student, free of charge.  You know when you meet people that you just instantly fall in love with.  That’s how this was.  They were so genuine and smiling the entire time we were together.  I am so happy to have met such nice people so early on in my time here. 

 Genuine people are more valuable than all the gold in the world.

Second day in Beijing…Airport

OK after a really long trip across the pacific I arrived in Beijing at 5 am.  My connecting flight wasn’t until 11:00 pm.   Since it was so far away they didn’t know the departing gate. So I was stuck wondering around the Beijing Airport trying to keep busy without blowing the little cash I had on me.  

I found an uncrowded coffee/pastry shop.  The servers were all very cheerful and cute.  So that was my home base for what turned out to be around 9 hours.  Every few hours I’d check to see if the airline knew my departure gate so that I could just wait there.  About  two hours before dept I asked and they still didn’t have the gate.  So, I went back to my coffee shop buddies and got into a really good conversation.  At some point I looked at my watch realized I had about 10 minutes to board the plane.  I found the gate that was posted, finally!  It was near the coffee shop.  As I reached to gate the airplane was not moving but had just backed out!

I begged the worker at the desk to call the airplane and ask them to let me on.  He just giggled hysterically.  

So, I went to the airline, explained the story and they comped me a ticket on different airline.  For the next day at 11:05 pm!  WTH, don’t they fly to Zheng Zhou during the day!?  So much for making a good first impression to my new employers!  As it is this weekend is a holiday weekend so I’m sure they weren’t thrilled about picking me up last night now they’re making two late night trips to the airport to pick up a stupid westerner!  Well I did bring my handler a really nice pair of shoes…Which are, you guessed it, Made in China!  I offered to bring a present and he requested a specific model of Clarks.  Not making it up, they are made in China….So my present to my Chinese contacts from America was made in China.  

Now, I’m sitting in an internet cafe.  I couldn’t get my laptop working b/c you need a Chinese phone to verify your account to use their wifi.  It took about 15 minutes of wrangling to access Tumblr.  As for Facebook, no dice.  Google, still working on it.  Twitter, forget about it!!!

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