I don't have a whole lot to say about today, but tonight, after class and meeting, as Pu Dixiong was leaving I grabbed my bag and told him I was walking with him. He lives almost due west, and I live north west, so we walk almost all the way to his place then I turn north and walk the rest of the way home by myself. It's kind of a funny thing to be able to walk with someone on their way home, something you can't do if you drive. I think it's something we car encapsulated Americans miss and we don't even know it.
Anyway, on our way home, he asked me if wanted to get something to drink at a store we were passing by. Of course I did, I love to eat and drink. In the store he got a big jar of Kimchi, and some strawberry milk. I'm not sure why I didn't get some Kimchi, a recent craving, because if it was good enough for him, a Korean, it's probably good enough for me. After he took the last strawberry milk I wasn't sure what to get, so I picked something that had pictures of wheat on it. I'd surprise myself.
As we walked leisurely through the moonlit alleys Pu Dixiong asked me about my wheat picture covered drink, if it was "hao he" (good). I lied and said it was OK, and offered it to him. He took a sip and made a face, agreeing with me that it was not OK. Then he offered me a sip of his, but I turned him down telling him, truthfully, that if I drank his that I wouldn't want to drink mine anymore. Then he told me that his was sweet and asked me how to say "sweet" in English. I told him "Sweet", then I mentioned that you could refer to a person as sweet if you wanted to. Then, as he sometimes does, he started asking if he could say certain things to girls in English. This usually amuses me because he likes to memorize phrases. Tonight he asked me if he could say "We are two birds." Which at first I didn't understand if I was hearing him correctly, or if he was talking to me, I didn't know yet that he wanted to say it to a girl. Then, after some chatter, I realized he was trying to say "We are two lovebirds." Which is still a pretty funny thing to say to a girl, but I told him that he could go ahead and say it, but he'd need to say "lovebirds" instead of just "birds." But I think he might actually have more success with just saying "birds" if she could figure out what he was trying to say. Eventually we ended up at a pretty busy street corner, with cars and people, where we were going to part ways. But we stood there for a few minutes yelling above the traffic noise to each other finishing our conversation. I'm sure any passers-by would have thought our subject of conversation was odd or amusing, I know I did.
As I turned around, parting ways from him, I was still laughing, and I wanted to repeat the things he had said and laugh out loud it was so funny, but I was suddenly aware that I was walking alone now and might appear crazy. It occurred to me that I could whip out my cell phone and pretend I was talking to someone and laughing. But I decided against that, because then I'd actually BE crazy. (edit 315) Permalink