This weekend was the same as any other. can't go out friday because have to get up early saturday to journey to work. Work was okay. I like most of my classes on Saturday, cute, well behaved kids. My 3 year old 1 on 1 after that even listened to me and sat with me for more than 2 minutes at a time (we played with blocks again, love blocks!!!!)
But the big thing was after work Ayi (means auntie, a polite way to address older women, and usually filling roles of cleaning person) had invited me to go to hotpot with her family. Last week her daughter was at school again and we were talking about likes and dislikes. Ayi makes her daughter come in to practice her English with me. Her daughter, xiaoyi, 17, hates speaking, and so we usually just chat in Chinese mostly, with some English to please her mum. nice girl, and I have lots of time between classes so sometimes it's nice to chat with them. So anyway last week they invite me to hotpot, i say yes, i love hotpot!!
I get off of work at 5:30, and we get to their neighborhood around 6:00. I assume we're going straightaway (i didn't want to be out late, with work, baking, and quiz preparing for the next day), but her husband didn't get off work til 7, so we had to wait. She says, "what do you want to do? where should we go?" I'm like... this is your neighborhood, you pick. Their neighborhood is actually quite similar to mine, except mine is downtown and theirs is far away. and apparently very few foreigners ever walk through.
Anyway, xiaoyi said 'let's walk through the market, they don't have these in america, right?' which is true, but I think she forgot for a moment that I've been living in China for so many months and must have been to at least on open air market. I told her how i actually prefer to shop there rather than chain stores because food is fresher and it's better for the local economy, she seemed satisfied with that answer. but every few feet she'd say to me, "there are so many people staring at you!"
I recognized this of course, because I can't hide my tall foreign appearance, and I haven't gotten used to it (i often find myself wanting to be in the states so i can blend in), but I've taken to sort of, not focusing on peoples faces when I walk around, so i can at least pretend like they're not looking.
and since this was the market where Ayi shops, she knew every other person and at one point said to me something to the effect of, "look at me and my American friend!" Beaming.
normally this too would annoy me but I like Ayi and was happy to make her happy.
So we finally go to the hotpot restaurant. And we're chatting, and shushu (uncle) arrives. I was expecting a big scary roughneck (because he works on the railroad lines), but Who i met was a reserved, polite, humble, and enjoyable man. A bit of a scratchy voice from either smoking or work, i don't know. You could tell that he really loved his wife and daughter. just a lovely family.
Shushu and ayio don't speak English, but with Shushu we were able to throw back and forth a few basketball player's names, Shaq (sounds like Oh-nee-are), Lebron James (ja muh suh), Kobe (koh bay), and that's always fun.
The table across from us was staring with abandon at me, so I waved and said hello, my usual reaction, because it's often met with an embarassed chuckle and look away. which makes me smile.
I explained this to ayi shushu and xiaoyi, that I think it's funny to call people out on their staring. They somewhat seriously responded, 'it's just that you are a foreigner and they are curious about you'. So I said, "yeah, and they think that's fun, I think saying hello is fun. So, we both have fun!" which satisfied them okay.
I told them about my family, again, that i have siblings and divorced parents is a really big deal. And i can say Boston, Washington (close enough to baltimore, sorry mom), and New York City in Chinese (Cleveland too, but I usually just say, 'by the 5 great lakes'). They asked me what do i usually eat with hotpot, this is by the end of the meal and i'm stuffed, and ayi keeps putting food on my plate. I say "about what we've had, we like to get potatoes too." and i'm glad i didn't way anything else because before I could stop him shushu had ordered potatoes. not what i thought that question was about. I had to tell them 10 times that if we got noodles too it'd be just ridiculously too much.
It was after 9 when we finished, i was tired, wanted to get a cab home (I was still far from home and i don't like cabs but i was tired), but ayi wanted to pay for my cab so i took a bus (which she had her daughter force her way onto the bus before me to pay anyway), and got home after 10. a long but fun night. I like spending time with nice people. they invited me back, and maybe to their house for dumplings (she's made some for me before and they're yummy!!!)
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