Photocopying on a limited vocabulary.

On Mondays, the first class that I teach is at 1:30, but I go into the office at 8. This gives me a chance to transition back into the teaching work week and to get a lot of sundry things done – working on lesson plans for the next week, prepping stuff for TIZO (the study that we do with our team; right now we're in 1 John), and making photocopies for my classes.

I want to introduce you to the photocopying part of today.

First, I stick everything that I need onto my flashdrive. Then I head over to the stadium store – a small store that is somewhere between a dollar store and a gas station store – which got its name by virtue of existing inside the stadium. You know, in all that lovely space under the bleachers. I give my flashdrive to one of the men who is sitting at a computer. He tears his attention away from whatever he was doing (sometimes a computer game, today watching a show) and prints off everything that is on my flashdrive.

I confused him a little bit today by having some things in color. He confused me by asking me if I wanted them printed in color. I told him no. He printed them, I paid. Everyone was happy.

Then I take the printoffs of everything that I need and head over to the building where the copy room is. On the back of each page that I want copied I write the number of copies that I want. Then I give them to one of the ladies who works the copying machines, along with a slip from my department so they know that I really am a foreign teacher and not some random foreigner who decided this would be a good place to get copies made, and voila, they give me the copies.

It's great.

Sometimes there are issues, most of which could probably be resolved super easily if I spoke more Chinese than I do. Instead, I get creative.

Here was the problem today with the copies: as I was handing her the pages, most of which I needed six copies of, I noticed that I had written 60 on the back of one. Whoops, I thought, that was silly, I guess I wasn't paying much attention. So I said, “Oh, deng yi xia” – hang on a sec – and corrected the 60 to 6.

Problem solved, right?

Nope. I had outsmarted myself. Because despite the fact that I needed six copies of most things, I did actually need sixty copies of this particular sheet. If I was in the US this would be slightly embarrassing to explain – oh haha, sorry, what was I thinking? – but it wouldn't be a major issue. It's the sort of thing where you just laugh and joke about it for a minute. However, my Chinese consists of things that I need to know to survive and not a lot of ability to joke around.

So there we are, her happily running the copies off and me trying to figure out what to say to inform her that I was having a really blonde moment and even though I just crossed out 60 I actually need 60.

I could come back and get more copies of it made later, I thought. But there were two problems with that approach... 1) I need them for my class this afternoon, not for my class tomorrow, and 2) I am not sure where my other copy slips are and I would have to find them to get more copies made.

So basically my options came down to figure out a way to do class without it (and that was not going to work very well) or explain that I forgot something and actually need more copies made.

Aha.

Last year, oddly enough, “I forgot!” was a huge catchphrase in my room, so we made Jill teach it to us in Chinese. And I remember how to say I forgot. Wo wang le.

I picked up the paper, scribbled a number on the back of it, and handed it to the lady after she finished my other copies. Wo wang le zheje, I said. That may be terrible grammar.

BUT IT WORKED.

And that is my life in China. Everything works in crazy ways, due to the combination of things working in different ways and the fact that my problem solving has to work in a language that I barely speak.

It keeps life interesting.  ;)