Dinner Guest

On Tuesday I put my email address on the board for the class to copy. I invited them to free one-to-one's, something that would normally cost them through the center. A one-to-one typically is just a 30-minute conversation with a teacher addressing the more pressing grammatical issues. My work schedule has been lite and for the first time in my life I've been looking for *more* work to do. The responses were interesting.

Sample 1: An email from a cute female college student in my class with her posing sexy in a doorway wearing a skirt and knee-high boots. She offered to introduce me to the "younglings" of Tianjin University.

Sample 2: "Trey: How are you?" with nothing but Chinese script for a name. "I'm very good, but who is this?" I asked back. "Do you have QQ?" was the response. What??

Sample 3: Another girls offers a tour of the local history museum and proposes a time for a one-to-one.

Sample 4: And my favorite, titled "Welcome You Are Home";

Trey, my lovely teacher. I'm busy for my works over today. So I'm sorry that I answer your email later.

First,I thank you for helping me to have a Gmail. I'm glade to go to our classroom and take you to my home by bus at 5 p.m this Sunday. Furthermore,If you will, I and my girlfriend welcome you to our home at any moment.

Sincerely yours,
Alan

When I first met him he shook when he spoke. He was terrified, like most other students, of speaking English. He was short with homemade tattoos on the top of both of his hands. It contrasted with his sharp dress - he was a JAVA programmer.

"No meaning," he would say of the faded version of Chinese "tribal" design when I asked what they meant. They were two-inch boxes and lines that looked like Chinese script. I had shown him my tattoos when I first met him. "I did them as a child. I wish they come off."

Over the past two weeks his English confidence had improved significantly. He didn't shake anymore when he spoke. Half the job of a foreign English teacher is getting the students comfortable enough to speak so that you have the opportunity to both correct them and show them that a native speaker understands them.

***

We met at the office to take a bus to his apartment. I informed him early I was on a tight schedule. One of the other teachers was flying back home the next morning and we were all going out that evening. Unfortunately, speed would not be a major theme of the night.

It's Chinese custom to bring a gift when meeting someone for dinner so I regifted a giant gift that I had been given when I left Jixian - a big box with dehydrated rice, beans, and nuts. I was told fruit would do well enough, but I knew I'd just throw the box away when I move to Shenzhen.

Alan's apartment was at the end of the bus route, a colorful but poor neighborhood in Nankai district. He called his girlfriend and we made our way up the stairs. Walking up I put my hands on the rail leaving a near permanent stain of ancient dust.

There are two apartments per floor in my building. There were four per floor in Alan's.

I was shocked stepping in. I had assumed Alan was wealthy... he was a programmer and always dressed sharp. Our classes aren't the cheapest service in China either. His apartment was perhaps 50% larger than my bedroom here in Tianjin. The entire bathroom was hidden when you opened the front door. A small "living room" with a bicycle and bookshelf was perhaps five foot by six foot. The kitchen had a wok on a small stove, no refrigerator, and a small plastic sink like you would see outdoors to clean fish in. The kitchen was maybe 3 foot deep and 6 wide with almost no walking area. An even smaller porch to dry clothes abutted it.

His room contained the hardest bed I've ever sat on, a small dresser, a computer and computer desk, and a couch that was really a bent-in-half mattress with wood cushioning. I stared outside at the tattered drapes on the porch of another apartment across the road.

I was confused... there was no food and no table to eat at.

"Do you like fruit?" Alan's girlfriend asked. She was involved in real estate and lived with him. Both were from different provinces in China - rare in Tianjin.

"Sure... fruit is very good!?"

"We will go to the fruit market then..."

I was envisioning some weird fruit kebob when we left...

***

To be continued tomorrow.


Tags:Treyopia China Stories Life Tianjin Students Teaching dinner