Animal Noises

I have officially completed my first week of language classes. 

At 7pm the night before my first class session I received a text from my friend, who is the Dean of International Students. "Sb and I will come tomorrow morning to fix your clothes line." A couple things should be noted before I continue:

1. It is common for Chinese to be ambiguous about time. "Morning" could mean any number of things, which means you need to either be prepared at all times or be alright with encountering strangers in your pajamas. 

1. The men were coming to fix my clothesline, which was non-existent when I arrived to the university. This task was imperative because dryers are non-existent here. 

1. I have no idea who "Sb" is.

The following morning (the day of my first language class) I had eaten, dressed, and cleaned my apartment by 7am. The Dean and a man in camo pants, who I am assuming was Sb, arrived at 9:10. They greeted me and brushed past quickly to the balcony to begin work. Sb began tearing down things, as the Dean and I sat in the dining room discussing the history of Hotel Del Coronado and the narcissism of my generation. Whilst Sb drilled loudly, I heard a faint knock at the door. Jo Laoshi stood a whole foot shorter than me with her platform heels on and small smile in the corner of her mouth.

We sat across from the Dean who was reading a textbook at the table, and began slowly working our way through what you might consider the Chinese alphabet. She gracefully pronounced the sounds like a song, and I echoed her with something that sounded more like farm animal noises. We worked diligently, pausing only for the sound of Sb’s drill to pass. After two hours had gone by I had a new clothesline, a mess of dust and trash covering my balcony, and had successfully butchered every Chinese word thrown my way.

We continued to meet every day for two hours in the morning. The second day there was a greater ease between Jo Laoshi and I. Maybe it was the lack of drilling noises or just that we were more comfortable with each other. She doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Chinese so we share our own language that is predominantly made up of hand gestures. By the end of the week my animal noises had begun to develop to sound more like a broken Chinese-speaking robot. But, today we were able to talk to one another in choppy sentences. We talked about work and children, and laughed at my poor pronunciation and redundant questions in the textbook. At the end of our secessions she always gathers her textbook and tea, turns to me with a smile and says, 明天见 (see you tomorrow).