Just another reason I love living here

Just one more reason I love living here: Tonight I was planning to make brownies for a reward for some of my students. I started putting things in the bowl and then realized I was one egg short. We have a small store in the basement parking garage, so I put shoes on and head down to get some more eggs. I get down to the basement where the store is supposed to be and it is gone. Again. I need to get back up to my place because I’ve already started mixing things. I really don’t want to go out across the street to the grocery store and wait in a line for half an hour just for one egg. I start thinking, can I make brownies with 3 eggs? What will happen? I start walking back towards the elevators for my building when I heard someone ask, in Chinese, “Teacher, teach my daughter English?”

I turn around and there’s a mom and her daughter standing there. I ask her where the store went, and she doesn't know. She asks me if I can teach her daughter and I reply, “I’m sorry, I’m already a teacher at an international school. I really don’t have time to teach extra.”

Then she asks if I have a boyfriend. “No,” I reply, “I have a husband.”

“Can he teach my daughter?”

“I’m sorry, he’s not a teacher.”

“What did you need to buy?”

“I need eggs. I need 4, and have 3.”

“You need an egg? I can give you one. Come up to my apt.”

I follow her and her daughter up to their apartment. One building over, 3^rd floor. Hers is on the front side of the building, a building I’ve often looked at before and wondered what the apts look like. It was beautifully decorated. She showed me around her apt, pointing out everything. Her shower looks like mine, with the blue tiles running down the middle. She’s added lots of closets. Her kitchen is miniscule. I’m talking one meter across, but several meters long. Barely room to turn around. She could cook eggs and lean against the back wall.

She asks, “How many eggs do you need?”

“Just one. I need 4, and have 3 already.”

She hands me 2 eggs. “Are you sure you don’t need more?”

“No, 2 is plenty. Thank you so much.”

While I don’t have time to teach her daughter English, I do have time to make a new friend. I suggested we get together next week for dinner. Her eyes lit up. “Yes! We can go out for duck.” She has a car, so who knows where she wants to go.

We exchanged numbers. She put mine under my Chinese name. 袁梦 It took a while to get the right characters because she was using handwriting recognition. There are a lot of characters for “Yuan.” Her daughter was trying to figure it out, too. I ended up typing it in my phone to point out to her.

I tell her I need the eggs to make a cake. (I don’t know how to say brownies in Chinese) She is impressed, and says to buy a cake at a bakery costs more than 100 RMB. I think I’ll make her a cake sometime and show her what good cakes should taste like. Not like sugarless angel food cake. (not sugar free, sugar LESS-big difference). Not with unsweetened whipped cream frosting. You know, when you don’t put enough sugar in your whipped cream? Yuck.

She asks where I am from. “America.”

“Oh, America is so much better than China. Things are so expensive here. Eggs are expensive. Fruit is expensive. Clothes are expensive. Apartments are expensive. Driving is expensive.” And in some regards, yes, that’s true. But our money goes a lot farther here than it does in the states. Apartments and cars are more expensive, but some things are cheaper than in the states. It’s a trade-off on many things.

Anyway, I may have made a new friend tonight. And my Chinese will HAVE to improve because I can’t communicate any other way. I think God gave me some of the words today because I struggle with Chinese sometimes, and it flowed effortlessly out tonight.

Maybe I won’t have time to teach her daughter Chinese, but I could suggest some sort of language exchange dinnertime or something. She’s in the next building, so hopefully it won’t be too difficult to meet up.