The scalding-hot-water-debacle day...

I can’t remember precisely if this was the scalding-hot-water-debacle-day, but it will be a part of today’s story regardless. The blunders and awkwardness of being in another country are beautiful, and for me, rarely not embarrassing. I specialize in embarrassing myself, so I seldom take it to heart.

I told you that scalding hot water is served with every meal no matter what, but I didn’t tell you that every school and even the airport has a scalding-hotter-than-Phoenix’s-pavement-in-August-water-dispenser for everyone to use. For some reason one cup of instant coffee wasn’t enough so I decided to have a second one at school. My friend, Erynne, and I decided to make a solo trip to the scalding-hot-water-dispenser down the hall at the university. We arrived and realized very quickly that scalding-hot-water is not free and required a student or teacher card. We trekked back to the classroom and retrieved Saloam’s teacher card. Back to the scalding-hot-water dispenser we went. The person in front of us got scalding-hot-water--no problem. How hard could this be? Our turn arrived. Simple. Put cup under spout. Press the button that looks like the “start-dispensing-scalding-hot-water-button” in Chinese. Fill the cup. Quickly realize that the cup is overflowing and you must find a “Stop-dispensing-scalding-hot-water-button” in Chinese. Scream and prance around as the scalding-hot-water-machine sprinkle baptizes you in water from Hell. Press multiple buttons to stop the nightmare. Finally find the “Stop-dispensing-scalding-hot-water button” in Chinese. Grab your cup of scalding-hot-water and casually walk out of the hot-water-dispenser room wondering what the Chinese student watching thought of the show. Walk back to the classroom and inform your friend that the charge for 5 cups of scalding-hot-water are on you because all 5 cups are literally On You. Simple, right.

Out of many cool things I got to do in China, one of the coolest was meeting with one of my VIPKID students. Most of you know that I teach Chinese kids in the morning via the internet. It used to be a main source of income but now it serves two main purposes: 1. A crutch to get this not-a-morning-person person out of bed early. 2. A way to connect with my favorite students.

One of my all time favorite students is named, Happy! My friend Saloam went out of her way to make sure that we could meet up with her in a nearby town at a super fancy mall. We ate at an equally fancy restaurant, and I was showered with many food gifts and a special calligraphy painting that Happy made for me. We chatted as much as you can chat with limited conversation skills and all left exhausted from the effort of it all!

One other fun note from the day. While at the university, I decided to use Google translate on a few posters in the classroom. It was amazing! You line up the picture with your camera and google translate changes the Chinese words to English. I was just a little troubled when I read, “The United States is everywhere…”. After a few minutes of trying to contemplate the meaning of this, I was thrilled to find out that the United States is the same word for Beauty. Lessons learned. 1. Native speakers trump google translate every time. 2. If you replace the word beauty with the United States all the time, you may start a cult.