A Piece of Cake

Day three, and I finally got through to her on the phone. However, as conversations go, it was pretty monosyllabic. The time-delay didn't help, and neither did her own personal time delay, which consisted of a deep sigh, an angry pause then a huffy one-word answer. Whatever. So-so. Nothing. Dunno. I can't say I blame her.

This morning I was shown the ropes by Jared. The students call Jared 'The Beautiful One'. He's from England, of Mauritanian ethnicity. He's friendly, intelligent, organized and popular. I'm taking over his classes in a week. It'll give me time to observe his teaching, but that might just make things even more daunting. I can imagine the female students, in floods of tears, carving his initials onto their breasts before hurling themselves from windows. He's going to be a hard act to follow. Jared is far too modest to acknowledge, or perhaps even notice, this. If he weren't so nice I’d hate his guts.

He took me through the books I'm to use, then showed me to my 'work-station' in the teachers' office. The office is bright, open-plan, made up of four-desk islands shared equally by both Chinese and foreign English teachers. I like it. It's friendly and conducive to work.

In the afternoon, Tam, Danuka, Gina and I were taken to a granite-walled hospital for the visa medical in the afternoon: chest X-rays, ECG's, and blood tests, which I guess are to make sure I'm not bringing HIV into the country. If and when I get my visa, at least I'll know I'm healthy. In the evening, Tam and I, feeling cocky, offered to get the carry out from the local restaurant ourselves, unaided. The other teachers primed us with what to say, which I have forgotten already, the Chinese language sounding, to the uninitiated, like a string of guttural grunts, and so down we went to the little restaurant, where the daughter of the family presented us with a menu written in, of course, Chinese. We shook our heads wisely, put the menu down on the table, and repeated our order like a holy catechism. And, guess what, she understood! She nodded, wrote it all down, and went through to the kitchen to relay the order. It was child's play. So Tam and I are sitting there, proudly patting ourselves on the back.

'You know,' I'm saying, 'China's not as difficult as all that. Sure, it's totally different from home, but that's why we came here, wasn't it?'

'Yeah,' Tam agrees, 'it's gonna be a hell of an experience.'

'I reckon if you can cope with this, you can cope with anything.'

'Right enough,' he flashes a conspiratorial look. 'You know, Gina hasn't been out of the college on her own since we got here.'

'Really? Wimp!'

'Sad, isn't it?'

The young girl came out of the kitchen and said something we didn't understand. We shrugged our shoulders and raised our hands palms-skywards, trying to make her understand that we didn't understand. Of course, she had understood that right away, by our crumpled, bewildered expressions. However, she just repeated the same sentence, or at least it sounded like the same sentence, who knows, but more slowly, as if she were talking to a slow student who hadn't yet figured out the answer. All we could make out was:

'WA BOO GE HU GE BU!'

Then again:

'WAAA - BOOO - GEEE - HUUU - GEEE - BUUU!'

We waved our arms about frantically, shook our heads dementedly and rubbed our stomachs hungrily. The young girl sighed, again the patient teacher whose students are just too dumb for words. She stood on a chair and pulled the clock off the wall. She indicated the number ten on the clock. Ah, it's money she wants! We give her ten Yuan. She looks at us, incredulous. Sighs once more. Silently counts one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten. Ah! Ten Yuan isn't enough! We give her a pink one hundred note, like, ten tens, yeah? We nod our heads inanely at her. She thrusts the hundred back at us and stomps off to the kitchen. We sit down.

'What the hell was that all about?'

'Beats me.'

Five minutes later the food comes, all in order; she piles up the cardboard containers in plastic bags, writes down the amount, we pay and head back up to the college, pondering the confusion. Why was the girl so keen to stress the number ten? We look at each other, laugh, and make an unspoken pact not to tell anyone about what had happened. And in that unspoken pact our friendship is sealed tight too. These moments do not come often enough in our lives.

We get back to the college, and the other teachers are mightily impressed.

'No problems, then?' Alan asks, raising an eyebrow.

'Course not, man. Piece of cake!'

'And it only took you just over ten minutes. That's a record for newbies.'

Ten minutes.

Oh.