today i received yet another item in the mail from su wenjun (aka "sue"), my roommate in shanghai. since our traumatic parting back in august (tears, hugs, the whole bit), we have kept up exchanging text messages, phone calls, post cards, and packages. after mom and dad's visit she received a ridiculous amount of american instant jello pudding powder in the mail. as i have more time to reflect on the summer, i continue to realize just how much i learned through sue's instruction, plus just hanging out with her!
in the beginning, my chinese was so elementary that i couldn't even present her with my roommate gift on the first night! i said something along the lines of "happy meet you. t-shirt. california university. close to my house. parents there meet. give you." ouch...
when i reverted to english in the following days, sue made it clear that we were going to obey the language pledge. even though i was intimidated, i agreed because i too was desperate to improve. we discovered that it was hard for me to learn words just from hearing them in conversation. so from then on, she made me/helped me write every single word that i needed to use down in a notebook so i could studying visually too.
most importantly, we started EATING together! most nights a week, i would go out to dinner with her and her friends from school. sue is kind of like me in the sense that she is a hard-core nerd but hangs out with a variety of people... her friends also include easy-going athletes, hyper korean exchange students, and one certain hilarious, pudgy girl named "fish." from hanging out with all these people, i learned about what to eat, where to shop, how chinese students kick back, what they think of american tv, when the cheapest time slots to go to karaoke are, etc.
nothing can teach a girl to talk like gossip, and that proved to the capstone of this learning process. if we missed our dinner dates, sue and i would at least engage in a little "ba gua" in the evening, to catch up on the personal lives of ourselves and our friends ;)
i am spewing all this nostalgia because: sue's gift today was a Shanghai World Expo official student volunteer uniform. here's a photo taken with my laptop tonight, and below, one taken in our shanghai dorm back in august. sarah and i were sending her off to volunteer like proud parents on the first day of school!
it goes without saying, this gift is meaningful to me in so many different ways. among them: the pride and excitement chinese people feel toward the expo and the little piece of modern history that the uniform embodies, the significance of volunteering to sue herself, the fact that she is still thinking of me 2 months later even though she has new alliance roommates and students, the memory of making fun of her because expo uniforms notoriously resemble "xiao baicai" or small white cabbages...
okay. as sue would say... 过分了！ enough! i am getting too sentimental and need to study. AND think of some way to adequately 表示感谢, or show my gratitude, to the coolest roomie ever.
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