Chapter 34 (1/2)

Chapter 34

Qiao Fei

I put down the phone, a little dazed.

Jia Yang was on the other end of the world,as I thought hard, I couldn’t conjure his image up.

I was currently in the College’s dormitory for exchange students; it was one person per room, each room had a bathroom and small electronic cookware

I had opened a bank account to receive the first month’s scholars.h.i.+p money, Montpellier didn’t sell Chinese phone cards, so I bought one, returning from Ma.r.s.eille. This was the first phone call I had given to him, and when we only said 10 sentences, Jia Yang said, that there were still doc.u.ments that he had to look at, good bye.

The computer’s notification: Your talking time was 1 minute and 25 seconds.

I looked at this phone card in my hand that had a picture of a monkey drawn on it, I didn’t know how much more time I had to or who I would call.

It is now July. The weather is hot. Others took a break off, and the school gave us some heavy homework.

I registered for the Interpretation School so I am in a cla.s.s, that is specialized in translating from French to Chinese. There aren’t many students, two Hong Kong cla.s.smates, three Taiwanese, two Belgium guys, four French, and me, the only Chinese mainland student, everyone already has a certain language foundation and experience, but have come here to receive training.

Every cla.s.s, the teacher must put on a series of news broadcasts. It’ll be about 10 minutes long, and asks that we make notes, then we will begin to translate. This practice can be up to 15 minutes, 20 minutes. My notes have become less and less, and the content that I interpret has become more and more detailed.

In the second cla.s.s in the morning, they introduce some French social life, to help us expand our vocabulary. I have memorized from “Fauvism art” to “Boomslang” from “Microelectronics” to “Dover French Doctrine”

Learning like this is very painful,to the point that my brains become juice and my eyes go black. But there are happy moments in the bitter moments.

The times in the afternoon are dominated by the students, the acquainted students make an appointment to go do their homework together in the library, and help each other correct their mistakes.

Sometimes we will go to buy fruit, swim in the ocean, talk a bit, some afternoons we will limit ourselves to only using one language, French, Chinese, and sometimes English.

Some mornings before cla.s.s, Qiao Te, who is from Belgium will hold some newspapers and run over and say to us: “I said, yesterday I recognized that person on the beach, so it was Ronaldo.”

I look at the newspaper, on the Hua Bian newspaper headlines read: Baseball Star Ronaldo goes to the Beach Resort for his Break.

“Then why didn’t you say it then.” I said, “I could even have gotten an autograph.”

“h.e.l.lo, I only saw a guy who had a beautiful maiden by his side, his head was pretty big, and between his front teeth there was a gap, I felt he was very familiar, but I couldn’t think of who it was.”

“Now that you think of it, it isn’t very newsworthy.” A French guy, Damian rebuffed him.

“This is my hindsight.” Qiao Te said in Chinese.

Everyone laughed.

Rong Rong, from Hong Kong, played the violin extremely prettily, she worked part-time at the Theater Center bar, we would go occasionally to join her.

This group of young people who spoke Chinese aroused the interest of the boss. He proposed that we do a day for his bar that was just related to China, it was currently the tourist season, so we attracted many guests, and he shared the revenues with us 50/50.

We felt it would be very fun and agreed to him.

We used bamboo from China to decorate the bar, the Taiwanese girls knew calligraphy, and copied Tang poems onto the wall, just like the existing ancient colors; we bought some incense from the Chinese store, and thus it also had an ancient smell; the Western bar also supplied some Chinese wine and small desserts that had been ordered from a Chinese restaurant; we also invited a travelling Chiense artist, who made ink splashes at the scene.

After a week, it seemed that everything had been prepared, the boss said: “It seems we’re still missing something. Which of you can sing?”

Damian’s mouth spoke quickly: “I heard Qiao Fei sing while she washed the clothes, she sings very well.”