My roommate gave me a panda teddy bear "to remind me of China" (its got on a nice Chinese shirt and everything), but then I felt bad because I didn't have anything to give to her... and well, what do you buy a Chinese person, in China, to remind them of America? or make them think about America? I only came up with McDonalds, but they have that already. So here's my conversation with her - all in English too... because, well... she's really great at English, and I'm rather bad at Chinese...
Me: would you like the beizi (or, a comforter. I like to throw in Chinese words just to prove I'm not completely retarded) that I bought here?
Jie: OH! yes! but you don't want to take it back?
Me: well it won't fit in my bags! And you can have my tub too! (I don't know what else to call them. They're plastic containers of various sizes that Chinese people are absolutely nuts over. Absolutely nuts, I'm not even kidding. I bought mine to do laundry in, because I got tired of the washer machine)
Jie: oh, could I!??!? (see, absolutely nuts about the tubs. She already has one but I knew she would want another one)
Me: Yes!!! And, maybe you would like some books in English? (I didn't know if she would or not... but I had so many I thought it was worth a shot ;) )
Jie: books!? I would like some!
Me: oh, well I have so many... (I really do have too many... I'm estimating I've read about 20 in the past four months... and thats my rather low-end guess)
So she picked out some books and was so excited to have them in English. And then in her nightly call with her mom she excitedly listed all the things I had given her (she thinks I don't understand her phone calls, but I usually do... I suppose I'm not too bad at Chinese after all...)
And everyone will be pleased to know that I survived the banquet and that it wasn't too bad. Except I said something wrong in Chinese but I guess no one else but me will remember that, right?
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