"Taiwan de mattresses" is Chinglish for Taiwanese Mattresses. Today in class I learned that it's not very good Chinese, I don't need the "de" But I like it... I heard about the mattresses before I got here, I heard they were hard, like a board. I figured it was an exaggeration, and it was. But I do find it difficult to sit up on mine because my feet slide off of it, they don't sink in at all, even with most of my weight pushing down. So my feet end up on the floor, which is also slippery with my $15 IKEA floor rug on it. I usually end up in a "super slouching position" when I'm typing e-mail or blogs, or watching a black & white DVD on my laptop. I can't describe it because it's never the same position.
I'm starting to notice that I like to write about the mundane details here. They're more fun. Like at meeting tonight a sister asked me in Chinese, that had to be translated for me, if I thought that the color of a pale purple onion shaped apple type-of mystery fruit was beautiful. I stuttered, I had nothing to compare it to but an apple, it didn't look like a good apple, maybe a good onion. What is a beautiful color anyway? So I gave the best response, since she was persistent, "Why do you ask?" But someone else distracted her into a different conversation by the time I gave her that answer. But the guy who was translating for me laughed, I guess he didn't know if it was a beautiful color either.

In my last entry I mentioned "Fur Eliese" as the song garbage trucks played here. But now I think they play more than one song, because today the garbage truck wasn't playing "Fur Elise." But don't worry, I'll get to the bottom of it, it's important.

Class is going good, I'm only lost and confused 1/4 of the time, and our student count is down to five, nice and small. And I get to be the only native English speaker in the class again. Which is interesting because most of the class is conducted in English so sometimes the teacher asks me if he spelled something right, or the other students ask me about English pronunciation. It amazes me that the two Korean girls had to learn English to learn Chinese, so they're double translating lots of the time. They also speak Korean about 2 octaves lower than they speak Chinese and English, they can't figure out why I'm always laughing at them. I can't help it. (edit 284) Permalink