Today was our first official day with Mr. Fu as our driver! I'd say it was a pretty successful day as we made it to Mandarin lessons just in the knick of time, I was able to go to Metro for groceries and we got dropped off at Zapata's for Quiz Night!
The whole day almost felt like a blind date where you knew what the person looked like but you had no idea how/if you were going to get along. Oh, and add the monkey wrench in that your "date" doesn't speak 1 word of your language! There were many awkward silences, a lot of polite smiles and that clueless feeling of how the relationship was going to progress.
We started out at 7:30 this morning so we'd have time to get to our 8am mandarin lessons. As we walk out of our building we looked at the sea of black VW Passat's (all drivers waiting for their families to drive them to work/school) we didn't see Mr. Fu outside nor did we expect him to be within the compound so we out to the front. After a few minutes Bill decided to go back in and have another look because we knew the car was going to be a Passat and there were at least 5 in the back. He found him and we were then on our way to New Concept Mandarin. I gave Mr. Fu the business card of the place with a map on it and he gave us the nod so we were headed in the right direction. There were a few wrong turns within the city centre but eventually after a few yi zhi zuo's (go straight) and yuo guai's (right) we made it. (Not proper Chinese spelling but you get the point!) We pointed out where our class was and I told him (with iTranslate on my phone) that we would be done at 10am. So as we walked into our classroom he parked the car out front and waited for us. Whew, the first ride was done!
After class we came back home right away because Bill had a slew of conference calls today and so I figured this would be a great opportunity for me to head to Metro to stock up on food! I'm not going to lie, I was really nervous to go with Mr. Fu by myself to Metro. What if he didn't know where it was? What if it was a repeat of the black taxi experience where we couldn't find it? And if it was a repeat or didn't know where it was how the heck was I going to tell him where to go? Remember, neither of us speaks each others language. I called my friend Gini to see if she wanted to come along, she was busy. Bummer! I was on my own! As I got in the car I showed Mr. Fu the taxi card for Metro and he smiled, nodded and said duo(good). We were on our way. And we went the right way! I was so relieved when we pulled into the parking lot. I did all my shopping and Mr Fu helped me load my groceries into the car. He seems like a nice man so far. The ride home from Metro is about 15/20 minutes pending traffic, when I came out of the store music was on in the car - naturally he's reading, listening to music, etc. while he waits, once I got in he turned the music off. That next 15/20 minutes of silence going home was a bit of torture for someone that likes to talk!
Once we got back I tried to show him the message that we didn't need to go anywhere until 6:45pm. He didn't understand, he started talking, I had no clue what he was saying. I think there were too many words in the message so I just made it simple and tried again - 6:45 here pick up tonight. He nodded.
I'm glad Mr. Fu's first day is done and over, probably more so than him because I'm feeling very sad that I can't communicate with him in a proper way. I know we will get there and I know he will learn our schedules and the places we go over time, it just feels wrong to show him a cell phone with translations typed into it when I want to go somewhere. Plus it'd be nice to at least say good morning and good evening and understand what he says back! I think we'll get there the more Mandarin we take, however today's awkward silences were just that... awkward! I think I need to learn to tell him he can keep the music on!
No comments:
Post a Comment