Where's LiLi?! The not so epic tale of the waitress LiLi

The first week I was here I had met the other foreign teachers and some of the staff at my school... that was about it. Me and one of the other foreign teacher went to a the foreign food restaurant near my apts named Tanbo. Our waitress was very cute and spoke absolutely no English... so one of the waitresses that seemed to know a little bit of English helped her take our order. I decided that next time she walked by I would practice the one thing I could really remember how to say in Chinese. So I introduced myself and asked for her name.... she actually understood what I said and gave me her name with absolutely no hesitation. And so I met LiLi. I had no clue how to say "Nice to meet you" in Chinese.... and hoped she would understand...... who knows if she did... She quickly went and got the waitress that speaks a little more English and she asked if everything was alright with my food... and I was like.. ya its fine... and they went away.

While I ate it ended up being the end of LiLi's shift.. and as she was on her way out the door... she dropped this note on my table.

She obviously did not write this herself... and I was very confused for a long time about who actually wrote this... because none of the staff seemed to know English well enough. (Later found out the one with good English was just to shy to talk to us until she left... story for another day)

Over the past few months I have spent a good amount of time in Tanbo..... we go there and eat as a big group often.. and it is a nice peaceful place for me to study Chinese... So most of the staff there are pretty used to me at this point and usually willing to help me with my Chinese. I have had many many failed attempts at talking to LiLi and a few successful ones. Even though some of the other staff are better at understanding me... LiLi is still my favorite waitress... and she knew this and so did the rest of the staff.. so I am sure she got teased by them.

On a side note.. waitresses seem to have pretty crappy jobs.. they work 7 days a week.. pretty much all day. So she was pretty much always there any time I decided to go in.

So I went into Tanbo on this past Monday at about 2pm..... and I was looking around because there was no one else in the restaurant.. and the smart waitress (Natasia has her name written down somewhere.. but I don't know it) told me "LiLi meiyou" which basically mean "LiLi don't have" or she isn't here and then told me she went home. This didn't realy surprise me.. because it was 2 in the afternoon and half the staff gets off for about 3 hours a this time. So Tuesday I went in to give some of the Tanbo staff some fudge (and do some studying while I ate) and it was 7 at night... when all the staff are usually there...... and there was no LiLi.... I didn't ask about her then though.

So Wednesday night I went in (after all the fun with the car wreck and shit).... it had been a bad day and i was ready for a nice peaceful meal at Tanbo............. no LiLi...... I know the staff noticed me looking around the restaurant at one point. So when HaiLun brought me my food... I asked her about LiLi.. and she said "LiLi meiyou" and then told me that she went home. So I asked "Home in Songyuan?" and got a no..... and then the only way I could think of to ask if she was coming back was to ask "Everyday LiLi no have?(direct translation)" ... she said yes. I said ok... and HaiLun went back downstairs.

HaiLun came back up to my table a few minutes later with this note (they know that I can read better then I can understand them)

The first part basically says that LiLi doesn't work at Tanbo. After I read that part... wrote the second part... which basically says "Do you want her phone number?" and as creepy as this is... and just wrong in so many ways.... I of course said sure. (phone numbers are passed around like crazy here.. its really weird)

So LiLi is gone... don't know where.. but she isn't in Songyuan anymore.... but I have her phone number if I decide I want to try to text her in Chinese....

I just still think its odd that LiLi didn't at least say goodbye....

My first trip to a Chinese Hospital

Yesterday was an extremely rainy day.... so I decided to say screw waiting on the bus.. and just grabbed a taxi that was driving past my apt. Headed towards work to pick up my schedule and give some of the teachers some of the fudge that I had finally successfully made.

Songyuan has very bad drains... pretty much none of them work (in most area's of the city). So the streets are just huge puddles but at this point they weren't too bad. But the taxi was definitely flying through them and I was like shit.... this guy is going to get in a reck.. and sure enough a car tried turning oddly infront of us.. and we hit his passenger side front corner. Of course taxis in China don't have seat belts.. and the ones that are there typically don't work.. so I course go flying into the damn windshield. Luckly I think we were only going about 40mph... so I just got a good knock on the head. I called Rolland(the guy at my school that takes care of all the foreigners) and got him out there..... I wasn't sure what to do when a taxi your in gets in a wreck. So we sat in the taxi in the middle of the road for a little over an hour waiting for all the shit to get settled. Then they took me to the hospital to make sure I was ok.

I really wish I would have been in the mood for taking pictures... but it really wasn't that impressive... it was just a bunch of big pretty much empty rooms with a few chairs and maybe a desk and a bench for the patients. The doctor decided that I should get some X-rays on my head and next (only things that really hurt) just to make sure I didn't like crack anything. So we waited for a little while for the taxi driver's mother to show up with the money to pay for the X-rays. Got the X-rays done... pretty nice little X-ray machine actually.... it was shaped similar to the MRI machines back in the states.

The X-rays came back fine.. and I just have a little bump on my head thats pretty read. Rolland was asking them to pay for me to go get a massage for my neck.. and at this point... it had been over 2 hours since the accident.. and I just wanted lunch (and was already late for a class i REALLY wanted to teach.... had to have chris take it over for me... was teaching the teachers). So I was like no... its fine.. I can handle getting my own massage (they cost like $8) lets just leave. The at this point the streets were completely flooded and you really needed a raft to get across.... so walking was out of the question. Most of the cars were still making it through though... so we got another taxi! And went a whole like 4 blocks.

The funny thing about this.. is that me and Chris had been talking to the teachers about car wrecks the other week.. and none of them had ever been in one.... and here I am in China for a little over 2 months and get one.... yay............lesson learned.. sit in the back seat of taxis!

Eating made me feel a lot better.. and I managed to make it to the last like 2 minutes of the teachers class.. enough time for them to ask me if I was ok and everything and for me to give them some fudge.

I rested in the school for a bit and then went to Songjiang to teach my one real class that day. Still not really feeling great.. but I managed to get into performance mode and got through the class and it went pretty well.

On my way home.. I decided (sense i don't have food at home.. besides instant noodle and fudge) that I would just go to Tanbo.. and have a nice relaxing meal there.. with no studying..........

Next post.......Where's LiLi?!

Trip to Jilin

Pictures from Jilin are posted on Facebook.

We had a pretty good trip to Jilin last week. It started with a 2.5 hour train ride to Changchun.... I decided to spend this free time to try to read my new kids book in Chinese... so I read it out loud (very badly) to Adam and he tried to figure out what it was saying (he has been here for 5 years and has a Chinese wife... so his Chinese is pretty good). We spent a good portion of the train ride reading through the little mermaid.... while Chris slept and Jess had to explain to the very confused passengers that the idiot failing at reading the book was her coworker and the one trying to translate it is her husband... and then then usual tell everyone that asks where we are from and what we do. So train ride = good Chinese practice time.

We only spent about an hour in Changchun.. enough time to get tickets for the train to Jilin (can't go strait there) and side down for a snack at KFC....... ordering at KFC was definitely an eye opening experience. I went up to the counter and tried to order a large fry in my broken chinese.. and the lady responded in like perfect English.. and took my order in English.... I can't even image the shocked look I must have given here. You never run into any restaurant employees that speak good English (if any at all) in Songyuan... and those that can speak some.... usually wont use it until you have been there a few times. My first sign that I definitely need to get out of Songyuan more.... hehe

In Jilin we wondered around and did some shopping... hit some restaurants that Adam remembered from when he lived there... and played some pool. Service is interesting in China... you finish a game of pool and call the employee over to rack the balls for you.... hehe. Adam had to go meet up with Jess and her family at some point.. so he drop us off in the area with a bunch of KTVs and night clubs. First order of business though was Chris wanted a haircut... so I decided to get one as well... its been a long time. Cost us each 15 yuan (about $2.15). Mine took about 20 minutes (with washing)... Chris's took about an hour (with getting washed before and after). With short hair they have a pretty crazy way or cutting hair... but they are damn serious with it and very good at it.... they mostly use scissors..... but they make that shit perfectly even.

We hit a really awesome club called G+ that played great music and had a nice little stage i totally could have used had I brought my hoop... it was really stupid of me not to bring it... but wasn't sure how the train traveling would go. We saw some other people that weren't Chinese so we went up and toasted with them and introduced ourselves... well damn.. their Russian... and speak very little English.. and very little Chinese. So our conversations were half English half Chinese trying to figure out what we could say that we both knew :) They were all college students here studying abroad. One of them was trying really hard to talk to us.. and getting really pissed off and cussing like hell (not at us.. just in general) when we failed to understand each other. He was pretty amusing and you could tell he was a little irritated with being in China and not really being able to talk to anyone.

Then we stopped by an awesome little steampunk bar!!! It was more like a bar then a dance club.. but it had a DJ an the waiters would dance occasionally...and they started something similar to a conga line that I totally joined in. The midget waiter even got out there and danced at one point!

Tuesday we spent the majority of the day wondering around this mountain park with a lot of temple type things. I took a lot of pictures of it... it was really pretty... we walked like 5 miles that day.. and a lot of it was stairs or hills. At one part of the park we saw a bunch of old people in the woods exercising on this one type of tree.. still don't know the significance of that tree.. but they definitely were all on the same type of tree... some of them were like scratching their backs on the tree and shit... it was kinda weird.

We went out to dinner with some of Jess's friends from grade school and their husbands.... they didn't really speak much English... so it was another good time to practice our Chinese :) They were a pretty fun crowd.

We caught a bus strait back to Songyuan on Wednesday morning and go back around 1pm. We watched some really crappy movies on the bus... but nothing eventful really happened.

When I got back, it had been 5 days since I had been to Tanbo(restaurant near my apt)... I decided that was way to long and headed there to study (I go there almost everyday). I knew the last time I had gone that I wouldn't be back for a bit... so I told them I was going out of town :)
I decided I would practice my pronunciation again for a bit.. so while waiting for my food I went do and started reading the Little Mermaid to the lady that works the front desk (I can't remember her name). She was pretty amused and kinda confused at why I randomly decided to go down there and read a kids book to her... but they are pretty used to me doing random shit. After a few pages she decided to start reading it out to me in little pieces and I would repeat those pieces right after her.... the Tanbo staff are my Chinese teachers.

After I ate I had a random craving for a Coke float... so I taught HaiLun (the bartender that also deals with icecream and shit like that) how to make Coke floats.... they thought it was a little odd. I decided to drink that at the bar and teach LiLi (my favorite waitress in Songyuan) how to say a bunch of the basic things they had at the restaurant in English (straw, fork, chopsticks, cup.....).

I ended up spending like 3 hours there.. and then going home for a nap.... after about an hour... Natasia called me to say she was headed to Tanbo for dinner... so of course I went ahead and joined her. When I sat back down at the table.. the waitress was laughing (i think it was LinLin).. so I told her in Chinese that Tanbo is my home. She agreed. Spent like another 2 hours there.. because after about an hour when we were about to leave... Ann decided to come to Tanbo.. and called me to see if I was there.. and to no surprise I totally was.. so ended up staying another hour with her and Ken.

Next post........ My first trip to a Chinese hospital.
After that.......... Where's LiLi?