"Don't speak for me and don't order for me when we go into restaurants. I want to practice." I wasn't sure it registered. She looked up from her Blackberry, fingers still clicking, then looked back down. After all the classes, the studying, the tests, the speeches and controlled conversations, it was time for the real thing. In Taiwan I was going to get five days of immersion. While Dodo was at her meetings, I'd be off chatting up the locals in Chinese. Picture a three year old babbling to a confused grown-up.
We went for breakfast and just as the waitress arrived, Dodo disappeared. She was off pretending to have an imaginary conversation on her phone, I thought to myself. I was ready, I'd been reciting my lines in my head the entire time I was looking at the menu. The waitress stepped over. The tension began to build. She looked at me and didn't say anything for a few seconds that felt like hours. "Ni hao" I said. "Ni hao" she responded. That's like "Hi" and "Hi." All those hard months of work had finally paid off!
1 comment:
So what happened with the rest of the exercise? You leave us in suspense
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