Monday 9/30      Language Frustration and TungHua Market

I stayed late at work working on my site when Gary called, he and Kate were at the night market closest to me, at TungHua JieKo, and I went to meet them using their directions, taking the subway to wrong stop first (Gary:  “It’s good to see you’re getting to know you’re way around, Grace.”  Me:  “Ha, ha.”)  and found the bus.  I asked the driver if he was going there to make sure.  He did a doubletake and looked at me, then enunciated “[4 stops to get there]” very slowly and clearly.  Usually I ignore or am slightly amused when people look at me confused wondering why I don’t speak Chinese well.  But this time something snapped inside and for the first time I felt really humiliated, and angry.  WHY hadn’t Mom and Dad taught me Chinese when I was little so I could speak normally?  Why am I almost the only one of all my friends who can’t speak?  If even they’d taught me starting when I was ten, or twelve, it would have been better than this.  Then I wouldn’t feel like such a retard, a freak, getting stared at, getting laughed at, getting smirked at, in my own “home” country.  I could have had free Chinese lessons from them my whole life, but now at 26 I have to come around the world and pay for classes to learn it.  It’s ridiculous and it pisses me off.

I know I can’t be mad at them, that they just did what they thought was good for us, and they feel bad about it now.  But at that moment, I just felt angry.

I got out and phoned them at the corner, and as they walked up I waved.  Right in front of me a guy getting out a cab thought I waved at him and he smiled and bowed to me.  That made me laugh, so I forgot about the bus driver.  In front of us was the store Gary said might have the stuff I needed.  I got curtains for my sliding door and rod and hooks, doormat, sunbrella for a cool 49NT, and tape measure.  We looked somewhere else for irons since I’ve discovered the rusty one from my aunt irons things yellow, and a lingerie shop for a slip because of my cheap paper-thin Esprit skirts (Gary: “Slip?  This I don’t know how to say.”) but didn’t find anything good.