Kids on the Bus

Well, last Friday Jean left for Harbin to visit her parents for a month before she leaves for America. In the meantime I've pretty much been going on business as usual.

The World Expo begins in Shanghai today. If you haven't heard of it, it's basically a World's Fair kind of deal... except they really are doing it something special. I read they spent like $44 billion dollars preparing Shanghai for it... that's more than they spent on the Olympics.

I'm not going to see it this month, A) because Jean's not here and won't get back till near the end of May, and 2) because it's going to be SO crowded. Shanghai is already a pretty busy, crowded city, and I don't want to think what it's going to be like for the early part of this Expo. In any case it lasts about 6 months so Jean and I should be able to go in June before we leave.

Other than that, nothing really interesting has happened recently except something on the bus few days ago.

So Jean and I were sitting on the bus heading for downtown Huzhou. As we drew closer to one of the stops along the way, a little girl, maybe 7 years old, got up from her seat and waited in front of the door so she could get off.

While she was waiting she noticed me and said to me (in Chinese, in fact this whole exchange took place in Chinese): “Excuse me, are you Chinese or a foreigner”

At this many of the other people on the bus around us chuckled and I replied to her: “I'm a foreigner.”

She then said somewhat indignantly, “Then why have you come to our China, huh?”

Everyone around us laughed again, louder this time.

“I teach English.”

And finally, with a sense of doubt about her she responded, “But... you don't look like a teacher.”

As she finished her sentence the bus came to a stop and she hopped off, leaving the remaining bus passengers laughing; the woman sitting in front of me laughed and commented, “Naughty little kid.”

I thought it was pretty funny, but Jean disagreed.