Not So Hot

Well, the last few days haven’t been very pleasant.  One of my students took me out for dinner on Friday and I was very sick the next day.  I’ll spare you the details — mostly because they aren’t pretty and I’m embarassed — but I ate some cow stomach and drank some very powerful Chinese liquor.  Anyway, it totally put me out of commission for 24 hours plus.

Sunday I was able to go out and sit in a cafe for a bit, which was nice.  I had some mild Western food.  Later in the afternoon I had an appointment to meet my teacher, because she wanted to introduce me to a woman that was interested in language exchange.  I was still a little under the weather when I arrived at our meeting place 5 minutes early.  It was raining and I stood under the awning of the main gates to one of the big parks.  I was pretty soaked though, because I lost my umbrella and stubbornly thought my raincoat was good enough.  I called my teacher maybe 5 minutes after we were suppose to meet — I wasn’t positive I was in the right spot.  She tells me she’s in a traffic jam, and she’ll be there in 10 minutes.  She ends up being 30 minutes late.  The plan had been to meet at the park and then she would walk with me to the tea shop where we were meeting my new language exchange partner.  So, we were 20 minutes late meeting her.  She brought her husband with her, so at least she wasn’t waiting alone.  It wasn’t the greatest meeting.  The deck was really stacked against me — three Chinese speakers all embarassed/unable to speak English and me.  Me with my pathetic Chinese.  Yeah, it really killed my confidence, because I felt like they were laughing at me when I tried to speak.  I know this kind of nervous laughter has more to do with their anxieties than with my inadequecies, but ARGH!

However, they seem very nice and invited me to their (no doubt very posh) home on Friday.  It’s a very generous invitation I think, but once again I think it puts us on uneven footing — literally her home base, you know?  But we’ll try.  I suspect her English is a little better than I think.  I only worry that my Chinese is so bad.

Oh, I forgot the most terrible thing that happened this weekend: when I was sick, I decided it was a good time to help a friend out with a website.  I totally messed it up.  I deleted it all.  I mean, it couldn’t be much worse.  Thankfully, I was able to recover most of it, but it still looks all funny.  The content is there, but the formatting is all wrong.  I don’t think I should go anywhere near anyone’s website anymore.  The set-up was unfamiliar to me, but it’s really my fault for failing to make adequate back-ups.  And data recovery isn’t exactly my specialty.  I was in over my head at that point.  So, no more websites.

And I haven’t heard from my friend to know if he thinks he can fix it.  I feel terrible.

But I met with a very nice woman this afternoon about tutoring.  She and a friend have an exam in October, so they have a textbook they’re working from.  She is very easy to understand, and seems more like my kind of people.  It was a very relaxed meeting.  No awkwardness.  Her English name is “Prisma” — how exotic!  I think I won’t have time for anymore students after this!

Oh, one of my students recommended a Chinese film: Blind Shaft (盲井, 2004), directed by Li Yang.  It seems to have been banned here, but that doesn’t mean I can’t find a copy.  Anyway, from the online reviews it looks way progressive.  Let me know if you check it out.

Still no passport, so no camera.  I think maybe I’ll save up my tutoring money for that purchase.  I have 200 RMB so far.  Not bad, but still not enough.