A Dinner Party

9/13/07


I had dinner with some of my students from my first-year adult English major class today. It actually was really random. I was at the meat and vegetable market and I happened to run into one of my students. After struggling through three minutes of awkward conversation, he asks me over to his apartment to have dinner. Not wanting to be rude and wanting to build relationships, I agreed. Jen, my colleague was invited to, but she isn't feeling well, so he insisted we walk her back to her apartment before we started shopping (the Chinese take colds very seriously).



So, we make our way back to the market and we stroll around for a little bit and he asks, do you like chicken (as we are approaching the live chickens). I mean who doesn't like chickens? So he proceeds to pick out a chicken. It was very interesting; it seemed that the quality of a chicken is judged by its feet. Or at least that is how it worked today. So the man took the chicken and disappeared. I could have gone with the butcher to watch, but I didn't want to come across as that much of an amateur.



We made our way up to his apartment, a studio, if you could all it that. It was one room, with a bed, two computers, and a bench/makeshift kitchen and some stools. Oh, and what I assume was a very small bathroom. And I am pretty sure three people lived there. A space the size of my bedroom and living room, but for the whole apartment AND three people. Pretty impressive. This whole time I have been a little anxious because his English isn't that good and we have already had numerous awkward…uh…moments, but then everything gets better when Oliver, the best speaker from the class walks through the door. Oliver…my saving grace. It was good to have a more confident speaker there (although he will have to shut up in class next week so other people can practice). But Oliver wasn't the end of the new arrivals. Slowly, just like class on Monday people start to trickle in. Word is out. Mr. Jake has come for dinner, get over here and hang out with the foreigner. By the time dinner had started there were seven students, three friends of my student (two of which lived with him), and one very precious 4 year old daughter of another student. Yeah…a party, and to think, I was just out to get some bananas.



But in my time here I have experienced a lot of conversational overkill. I have become overly encouraging. It is necessary and it doesn't bug me, but if you were here watching you would laugh. But my students are overly flattering and overly apologetic. The feel they are the luckiest students because they have a foreign teacher. And they would have never DREAMED that they would eat dinner with him. In fact, I am only the second foreigner Oliver has ever met or spent time with (it didn't fully cross the language barrier).



All in all it was a good time and I am glad I accepted the invitation. I think these will be some important relationships this year and I think He has a plan for them (how else can you explain tonight). Hopefully we can learn a lot from each other. Worst case scenario, they will get a lot of opportunities to practice their oral English.