Shoes and Xu Gai
Really, I’m not much of a shoe guy. But I had lots of trouble with shoes last week when I was hanging out with my friend Xu Gai. Xu Gai is a friend of mine who I’ve barely gotten to see this semester because she’s been so busy. Then I found out she was asked to go to Germany at the last minute to do some research! We had a goodbye lunch over the weekend, both for her and for Maria, who is going back to Denmark. I’d just bought a fabulously ugly dress, green with lime green and sky blue circles it, which I decided to wear, and to be particularly festive, I decided to wear my fancy blue sandals too. But, lo and behold, as soon as I got to her house, they broke. She lent me another pair, which hurt, so I bought a pair of flip-flips near the restaurant. Then the next day, I went to Xu Gai’s to help her with a translation project. As we were going out to lunch, the flip-flops broke! She ended up buying me some cool polka dot slippers.
Also at lunch Xu Gai, whose name can mean something like “slowly revise,” or “revise bit by bit” asked me to help her with a translation project. She wanted me to go over a translation and clear up any English errors. I thought the document would be 20 pages or so, but it turned out to be 46 pages long! So we revised bit by bit that day from about 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 at night!