... is CNN?
No, not the whole building. Just an apartment on the 16th floor. There are about eight people in small cubicles in the main room, and Mr. Florcruz (the bureau chief) has a side apartment thing. The only reason they are cramped is because the other apartment that they own is getting painted, or something like that.
Anyway, my taxi pulled into this gated complex and then dropped me off. CNN, as I could see in my intern packet, was in building 12. However, the buildings in the complex ranged in number from one to ten. Obviously, this was a problem. I spotted an African woman coming towards me and, reasonably sure that she was not a native Chinese speaker either, I asked if she spoke English. "No," she said, but she did speak
FRENCH!
I've never felt so fluent in French in my LIFE. I'm certain that there were a lot of things that I was trying to say that didn't really come across as making sense, but I had such a feeling of real conversation and understanding. A stark contrast to my daily struggle to order rice in any given cafeteria here.
She helped me find the correct building, and I went up to the sixteenth floor and spent about five minutes talking to Mr. Florcruz before leaving the building, because all he wanted was a resume. He said he'd send it out and hopefully find something for me to do. It was fun getting the taxi there and back, though.
Instead of doing homework, my new friend Alice came over and we decided to tour the campus. I'd have pictures, but my battery died. I'll try to describe them in fewer than a thousand words:
(Insert picture of stereotypical Chinese tower here)
(Insert picture of frozen lake with ice-skaters here)
etc. etc...
(Insert picture of frozen lake with ice-skaters here)
etc. etc...
After seeing what campus had to offer, we decided to go off the beaten path and leave campus. We walked around the edge of the wall and then across the street. There was a gate that led to a dirt road, so we went down that. Eventually we arrived at a dirt road that resembled a post-apocalyptic zombie-movie setting. Rubble lined the roads. Still, we journied on. Journied should be a word.
Eventually we came a frozen pond, an empty fountain with a stone fish in the center, and strange porcelain tiling under the dirt on the road. I have no idea what the deal with that was. Anyway, across the frozen pond was a very long, single story building, which seemed to be alone in the otherwise desolate landscape. There was a light on, and a few men were walking in, and a few were walking about. Behind us, two men walking the opposite direction on the path started yelling something at us and pointing at the house. They kept walking. I asked Alice what they were saying.
She said that, as they pointed at the building, they simply yelled "good fun."
I'm going to wonder for a long time what that meant.
Eventually we came a frozen pond, an empty fountain with a stone fish in the center, and strange porcelain tiling under the dirt on the road. I have no idea what the deal with that was. Anyway, across the frozen pond was a very long, single story building, which seemed to be alone in the otherwise desolate landscape. There was a light on, and a few men were walking in, and a few were walking about. Behind us, two men walking the opposite direction on the path started yelling something at us and pointing at the house. They kept walking. I asked Alice what they were saying.
She said that, as they pointed at the building, they simply yelled "good fun."
I'm going to wonder for a long time what that meant.
3 comments:
You should just learn how to say "huh" in Chinese. I think that would help you a lot.
$1000 says it was a brothel. Betcha.
I am also very proud of you for speaking French while sober.
"journeyed" is totally a word.
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