Phone Duty

As much as I love (*cough cough*) phone duty, I do get to have some great conversations.

Me: Schoolhouse, Elizabeth speaking.
Guest: Hello, I'd like to make a reservation.
Me: Sure, for our restaurant, a room or a home?
Guest: Wow, and you speak wonderful English too!
Me: Umm...Thank you...


Tour Guide: There is some construction going on and they aren't letting our bus come to your restaurant.
Me: Yes, you just need to drive up to the wall, around and back down.
Tour Guide: We tried that but there is too much water in the parking lot so we can't go through.
Me: Your guests might have to get out and walk then. It's only about 5 minutes.
Tour Guide: All 27 of them?
Me: There really are only 2 ways to get here and if your bus can't go either way, I don't really see another option.
Tour Guide: Can't you just bring our meal to us up here at the wall?


Guest: I'd like to make a reservation for 4 on Saturday.
Me: Ok. For what time?
Guest: How about noon? Is it going to be raining on Saturday?
Mona: Only the Chinese government can control the weather.

The Bean Sprout Controversy

Apparently I am going to die tomorrow...or perhaps tonight. I'm not too clear yet. My crime, you ask? Eating bean sprouts. Perhaps I should start at the beginning.

I bought lots of veggies on my days off, planning to make 3 or 4 stir-frys but only ended up making 2 because Tana and I went out for hot pot in Huairou instead. So, naturally I had some left-overs. Tomatoes make for good breakfasts and cucumbers are fine on their own, but I pulled out a bowl of raw bean sprouts tonight and Tana and Zhan Li Jie just stared at me. Now I know that most people don't eat them raw, but I didn't think it was that odd. On the other hand, Chinese people cook their lettuce so who knows...

I convinced Tana to try some and she actually liked them...until Johnson and Simon -- two of our chefs-- came in, that is. "You can't eat those," they said (in Chinese). I just nodded and kept eating. Finally they got the message across (through Zhan LiJie and the translation software on her phone) that they believe raw bean sprouts to be poisonous.

Being me, I googled it and kept eating. Apparently there is an advisory against eating them raw, but they are said to be about as dangerous as any other raw veggies. I later learned that Tana and her family have gotten horribly sick from eating raw green beans in the past. That's basically the only way I eat green beans...

I hope it's Chinese people who have an odd reaction and not Chinese bean sprouts...

Broken Telephone (No Pun Intended)

My cell phone ran out of minutes the other morning, as it sometimes does, so I planned to go to the store after work to buy one of those little pieces of paper with a number on it that you call to add more minutes. At the end of the day, while I was waiting for the car back to the residence, I thought it might be a good idea to ask someone to write down what I needed for me so I would have an easier time in the shop. Juliette (who speaks a small amount of English) was sitting there, so I asked her. After gesturing and trying to explain a few times, I thought she understood because she started to write something down for me. She decided to double check on her computer, typed in some characters and asked me if that was what I meant: "You need to repair your phone?"

I then tried to explain again. She turned to Alice (who speaks a different small amount of English). She nodded vigorously as though she understood and told Juliette some buttons to push on my phone. I got confused here because there is no way to add minutes from my phone since I have never given them a credit card number, but I though maybe there was a code she needed. Juliette seemed to get a bit frustrated and passed the phone to Alice who continued to attempt the proceedure.

After a couple minutes Alice turned to me triumphantly and told me exactly how much each call I makes costs me if I am in Beijing or Huairou. Apparently they hadn't understood...I tried one more time and she said, "oh! Just give your phone and money to Johnson and he will do it on his computer. Why didn't you say that in the first place?"

Now that was a real game of broken telephone!

I Don't Know

Okay, I give up, Chinese internet just sucks. I'll just read a book, or sleep more, or find a new chess partner... Except most of my workday is spent on the computer...so somehow that just doesn't work. Anyways, the reason my blog posts have become so infrequent is that I can rarely connect to VPN and thus rarely post. Tonight, for example, my mom has to log in and post for me.

Giulia had her last day at work today and Mona's is Thursday. I hope the new intern coming soon will be nice and will speak English, though it might be nice to practise some Spanish as well, since he is from Spain. On the other hand, I already seem to put a bunch of Spanish words in my Chinese -- I guess my brain doesn't like new languages.

"I don't know" seems to be one of the most common phrases here. Staff say it jokingly just to be annoying or in a shrug it off kind of way. I was thinking about how confusing a phrase it actually is when learning a new language -- bear with me here since I was thinking this around 7:30 during breakfast after night duty the other day. Anyways, one of the cooks came up to me and started trying to ask about a guest  and whether they had checked out. I told her I didn't know but couldn't get across the fact that I didn't know whether they had checked out, rather than that I didn't know what she was saying. A confused-looking face seems to get me to about the same place.

I tried to walk home from work today but it started raining as soon as I began my walk, so the car picked me up :( When we got back Mona was going to the gym as she often does. I don't usually join her because I hate gyms, but I decided to go and dance tonight. It was great! I miss dance class and I am going to miss Mona and Giulia!