M for Mandarin

I am a Mandarin Teacher, living in Hong Kong..

Monday, December 04, 2006

A Special Invitation..


I went to my Japanese student's apartment for his weekly lesson on Saturday. He noticed the change of my voice and asked me whether I had flu, and just after telling him that I was nearly recovered from cold, he coughed! Thank God, I felt less guilty then!! What a relief!! (maybe he felt the same, lol..)

He told me a true story of himself which is quite interesting.

Back to more than 10yrs ago, when he was studying in an university in China, he and his friend (another Japanese) went to Mongolia together during the holidays. Trying to explore the world with little money in hand, they reached there by train, and set up their tent on the grassland. There was a teenage mongolian girl (around 15yrs old) and her younger brother came to their place and invited them to have dinner at their yurt. My student had a hard time to understand her poor Mandarin but still decided to follow them (his friend chose to stay back in the tent)...

The Mongolian family was very poor, there was no electricity in the yurt, and it was an unsavory meal, however he managed to eat some... They asked him to stay there overnight but it was really too uncomfortable for him to stay any longer, so he thanked them and went back to his tent.

The next morning that Mongolian girl and her brother came again, she passed a note to him which was written by her father, it said : This is your bill for last night's dinner, please pay us $50 !!

What a surprise!!!





3 Comments:

  • At 9:43 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Thank you for sharing the story.
    It is funny. You have an interesting job to meet different people from all over the world.

    The fobs posting in my blog, Bless
    Ewe was stitched one over one on 28 counts fabric. Stitching one over one with linen or evenweave can be fun, more stress on your eyes and I generally need extra "lighting".

    Hope you are feeling better. Life
    always has its ups and downs. Just take one day at a time.

     
  • At 12:41 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    What an interesting story!

     
  • At 10:46 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Thank you for leaving the comments on my blog. Yes, I can see the chinese characters on your comments.

     

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