'I forgot you were lao wai' and other tales of mayhem...

I sat silently at a stained plastic table in the corner of my latest favorite Chinese restaurant and eyed the discolored jars of floating vegetable matter hoping that I would never make the mistake of ordering something that would require the waitresses to go fishing in them. I stomped my feet to keep the chill away found myself looking straight into the face of a befuddled Chinese man in raggedy clothes. He shook his fist of wadded money at me and asked impatiently for change... I raised my eyebrows... he immediately realized that I wasn't the cashier or even the same ethnicity as the cashier and mumbled an apology as he backed away the same way I would if I was presented with a plate of the jar innards.

In the taxi cab we reclined, so full of a hastily eaten meal that all three of us wished out loud for stretchier pants. Having taken the initiative to order the food, despite my childish grasp of Chinese, I was of course blamed for the overindulgence. As the cab careened in and out of the sludgy traffic and useless lights, my friend leaned across the backseat, patted my thigh, and asked me something. When I just stared blankly at her she burst into giggles and declared oh I forgot you were lao wai (foreign). It was my turn to burst into laugher so raucous she immediately defended herself you just fit here, this isn't my wrong...

I marched my icy self into the trashy cramped copy shop I always go to and nudged past the throng of people who all seemed to have no urgent business but only needed to push each other for the warmth. The copy shop man immediately paused whatever he was doing to accept my usb and print out what I needed. As I instructed him on what to print and how many copies to make the beehiveesque activity came to a standstill and one man asked who is she? To which the copy shop man, not missing a beat, explained she is an English teacher and our friend. I nodded in affirmation, pressed the warm copies to my body, and paid the heavily discounted price before squeezing back out the door to the filthy frozen street outside.

The bus doors slammed squeaked open and I jumped up and was greeted by a driver who I had met earlier that day. He ushered me into the front seat reserved for friends of the driver and we began chatting about where I was going and why Tibetan people have good English pronunciation and ten reasons why tsampa was the most delicious food on earth. An elderly woman piped in every now though she faced the back of the bus and never looked at us. Eventually we rolled up to her stop and she turned to pay her bus fare and gasped but she sounds just like a Tibetan girl! The driver grinned like a proud father and said oh but she is an American girl. The woman stumbled off the bus in disbelief and the driver promised to bring me some tsampa the next day.

And these were just a few happenings from this past week... you can only imagine a semester's, or two and a half years, worth of the like...  total mayhem.

My face betrays me. If I weren't so white I'd be invisible.