It's 86 degrees today, at 9am on Mid-Autumn Festival Monday. I'm not teaching today, but downtown is busy and the banks appear to be open, so I will do some more foreign exchange if I can find a Bank of China.
I am very uncomfortable going out of my apartment each day, as I'm just not accustomed to people staring at me or chattering at me in rapid fire Chinese. My all purpose phrase is "wo shi Yingwen laoshi", which roughly means "I'm an English teacher." Unfortunately saying this to an older guy in the Botanical Gardens kitty corner from my apartment (a place I plan to frequent, as there are fewer people to stare at me), backfired yesterday. This persistent clown insisted I give him my Chinese cell phone number, then demanded that I accompany him out of the park (what on earth for?) then, giggling like a halfwit, he grabbed my hand, tight, which isn't what I'd read the Chinese do, and trotted down the path, I suspect showing off his new English friend like a new pet. When he started to kiss my hand, I stopped in my tracks, told him: "I don't know what the F you're playing at, Bub, but I'm outta here." Then I walked away from
Mr Crackpot, and bought myself a canteloupe from a nice woman with a truck parked outside the gate. I also checked that this idiot wasn't going to try to stalk me. If I start getting strange phone calls and heavy breathing my phone, I have this person's number and will ask one of the female teachers at school to report him to the police. I'm really not sure what was going on. I'm willing to write it off as some lonely retired guy (he told me he was a teacher, hmm not sure that's true) biting off more than he could chew by trying to communicate with the foreign woman.
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