Mysterious Elevators

This morning, I went with James to the downtown EF main headquarters office to take our placement test for Chinese lessons. It was one of those mornings where I felt grateful that I live so close to work. We waited for three trains to pass before we made it into one crammed in like maltreated livestock. The morning commute in Beijing is pretty intense.

We made it to the center and there were no buttons to push for the elevators. We had to ask a security guard who pushed a button for us at his control panel and we had to wait for our specific number. Crazy! We made it into the testing room right on time. The test was two pages long. Luckily, the directions were in English. I could only write two words in pinyin: "thank you" and "hello." I was able to match a few English words to their pinyin words: tea, how much, teacher, beer, and little sister. (I only know mei mei because of watching "Firefly!") The second page asked us to write sentences in characters and I can't do any of that. I spent an outrageous two minutes in the testing room. The proctor was pretty surprised and said, "Ah, a true beginner!" Yup, that's me!

After we got back to our neighborhood, I went grocery shopping and I got a kick out of listening to the easy listening that the store was booming from their speakers. It was mostly Fleetwood Mac and the Carpenters! It was hysterical and it made me smile.

I only had one class this evening with one of my favorite classes. Everyone in that class is so smart. I often start some of my classes with a conversation game about their highs and lows from the week. Today, the students didn't wait for me to talk, but just started telling me about the good and bad parts of their week. It was a really sweet moment for me.