The Art of Being Cool

Last night we dined for the second time with Sai Sai’s parents (Sai Sai is out of town for work). They chose another fancy seafood restaurant, where the first floor resembled a fish market teeming with live creatures’ great and small, and everyone dines in private rooms with lazy susans. They brought along Lei- our 32 yr old “translator” friend- and a pregnant lady and her 14 yr old son, Hong. Hong has been studying English for a year and has just been accepted into a small high school in St. Louis. While he understood most of what we said throughout the evening, his accent is very thick, but impressive nonetheless. He leaves in 2 months and has only been to the states once, briefly- bless his heart. On top of that, he will be the only Chinese student in the entire school. I have no doubts about his high intellect and I completely admire his courage for heading over to the “Land of the Free” alone, yet I am completely terrified for him, knowing the way high school kids can be……

Hong had a list of questions for us- mostly involving food and facebook (which is strictly forbidden in China). He asked no less than 3 times if St. Louis had Chinese food restaurants-we reassured him that all cities in the US pretty much had Chinese restaurants (even though I personally wouldn’t set foot in about 90% of them). Instead, we tried to talk up the BBQ and fast food options. What Hong lacked in actual experience living in the states, he made up for by memorizing the entire Wikipedia page for St. Louis, which he repeatedly quoted throughout the evening. For instance, “Wikipedia says St. Louis has a very high crime rate.” Hmmm valid point. But that’s ok, because earlier in the evening he performed a Moi Thai (Chinese fighting) routine in the restaurant, where he almost decapitated poor Lei. I told him he’d be fine. Of course, my Second Amendment-loving Harrison was of the opinion that he should go ahead and get a gun license when he touched down in the states, which caused his mother to break out into a cold sweat.

Hong’s enthusiasm for journeying to the US (and the Mid West no less) was adorable. I vowed to Harrison that I would fly to St. Louis and personally injure any kid that’s mean to him. And that’s when I discovered my new calling for the summer- I will teach Hong American slang, essentially conducting a course on “The Art of Being Cool”. Now, you may think this is presumptuous, I mean, who am I to claim that I write the book on being cool……but I figure if I can just help him to loosen up a bit on the formality of his statements, he may have an easier time making friends. For instance, when we asked if he liked country music, he responded “Oh, yes. It is very nostalgic- there is sadness yet hopefulness at the same time”. His insightfulness blew me away! So smart! But if I could just get him to say instead: “Ya man, Toby Keith rocks”, I think high school would be a far friendlier place. I’m not suggesting that Hong isn’t already pretty fly, but adding a “What’s up?” and “Do you shoot hoops” every now and again couldn’t hurt his social life, only help. Along with a list of High School Vocab Terms, I also plan on sending him home with a “Required Listening List”- with the likes of Katy Perry and Jay Z. I think Starbucks or KFC would be the perfect meeting point- Americana at its finest.

Other gems of wisdom we learned from our young friend Hong- Chinese students learn algebra in elementary school, followed by calculus in middle school…Comments like this make me nervous for America’s future.

In other exciting news, Harrison and I decided to take a two week sailing course at the Olympic Sailing Center directly below our building. We were walking to dinner the other night and noticed a red-headed kid cleaning off the boats in the harbor and called him over, eager to have normal conversation without the use of exaggerated gestures and grunts. Long story short, we negotiated an awesome rate for 10 private lessons with the kid, a 15 yr old sailor extraordinaire named Oliver, who lives in Hong Kong and speaks both English and Chinese.

The first part of lesson #1 involved learning how to rig and de-rig the boat- which I personally believe you need an engineering degree to accomplish. Hopefully it will become more ingrained over the course of the program. Today we learn what to do in the event that the sailboat capsizes……not really looking forward to jumping into foreign waters, especially if the creatures swimming below me look anything like what we ate for dinner last night…….