Friday: I left early for my Chinese lesson because I knew I had somehow or other to get the seat of my bicycle fixed. Fortunately, in the little side-street by my house the lock-man and bicycle mechanic had already set up his tricycle-trailer stand. He was wearing a dark green army coat and a hat with earflaps. I showed him the problem. He looked at it for about half a second, selected one of the two wrenches he happened to be holding, tightened the bolts many turns, and the thing was as good as new. I asked if he wanted money and he laughed and said, Get on with you.
It took only about five minutes or less. The rest of the time was taken up with my getting lost. I was pedaling along, reviewing in my mind the poem I translated in the last post, and suddenly I realized I had forgotten to turn east and had gone very far off course. No wonder everything looked different and kind of interesting… The undignified scramble which ensued, I will not describe in detail. I did make it to my lesson on time, and that's all that matters.
As usual, a very good lesson. I told AL the woeful story of the duck king, and she said that on the one hand, it is a fairly normal thing for a friend to force upon a friend (she taught me the Chinese word for "venting"), but on the other hand that WW seems like a bit of a strange person and perhaps not necessarily the most productive of people to associate with. Tell me about it!
AL also told me more about the language program, of which she is the director. I was interested and impressed to hear about it. The summer intensive session sounds like a lower cost but still very high quality version of Princeton in Beijing, but with more personalized attention and more exposure to real Beijing people and life. I know if I had known about it back when I was struggling to learn Chinese in my hometown state school, I would surely have been interested and profited by it. Well, of course it didn't exist then, as that was a long time ago. In any case, if you're looking for a summer intensive Chinese program, this one would be worth looking into. Intensive instruction within the environment is really the way to go, and why pay more when you don't have to. End my plug for AL's summer language program!
The only other thing of note was that I waited around all afternoon for the travel agency to deliver my tickets. They had called the previous afternoon, saying they could get a cut-rate ticket but the return date would have to be the twelfth. Sorry, no. It would be more expensive for me to find two more days lodging than for me to pay the original price. Okay, then they'd issue the original ticket and come deliver it to me on Friday afternoon.
Actually, I could have gone to the library, because AL said they'd probably give me enough advance warning that I could get back in time, and anyway, I would be perfectly justified in keeping them waiting after the big deal this has turned into. But I was also quite tired from the longer-than-intended bike ride, so I sat around.
At ten to five I called them. It should be out for delivery! they said. Call this number. After a few moments hesitation, I did. The sullen travel agency answered, and said, yes, he'd be there soon. Just hang on. I hung on. At seven, he finally showed up. Ah well. At least the saga of the tickets is finally at an end. I have the ticket in my hand, very old-fashioned looking with the red carbon paper and all. I'll have to be sure I actually remember to bring it to the airport! I haven't had a paper ticket since the last century...
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