Saturday, May 26, 2007

She Talks To China

SKYPE!

Oh how I love thee, Skype.

Or as my pals in China call it, Sky-pee. Maybe they're right, who knows.

It's a chat program that allows us to talk to each other in real time via a microphone. For FREE, people. Free. Free chats with China!

Last night husband set it up and I asked, "Do we have a microphone?"

Those who knows me IRL are going to LOVE that one. Do we have a microphone.... what the hell was I thinking?

The real question should have been, "Which microphone?"

(I use a microphone to make my living.)

So last night I had a little glass of wine and giggled my way through conversations with my internet pals in China. There was a lot of giggling going on, actually. They were nervous to practice English and I was half drunk. One glass. Man oh man, what has happened to me? I was the gal who could guzzle a few bottles before falling over. College. Fun times.

I had mini Mandarin lessons. You should have heard them when I said Nanchang. Nan-CHANG. Totally Midwestern. Yeah, I had that one pretty wrong. At least I gave them a good chuckle.

Xie Xie? Which means thank you. I learned to say it from Sagwa The Chinese Cat (show my daughter loves.) I once said it to someone and she replied, "NO, you say it like this, "shay shay." And I thought, why would the little Chinese girl who speaks Chinese say it wrong on Sagwa?

Because she didn't. The chick who corrected me in her haughty tone was wrong. Of course.

Actually, how you properly say xie xie sort of sounds like how Cartman from South Park would say it. Xie xie! Heh. I'm laughing as I type this. Channel Cartman and xie xie just rolls off the tongue.

I'm social, I'm not shy, that has to be obvious, right? Well, one of the ladies from our travel group from my city left me her phone number in an email. So this morning, I called her. I was kind of sort of nervous, even with my bold personality. I've heard horror stories of the numerous "odd ball" personalities that are in the various travel groups. There always seems to be that one couple that the rest of the group can't stand. Usually the bossy ones, the super miserable depressed ones, or the hoity toity ones. Some groups even get one of each. How lucky.

I was SO hoping this gal would be cool and YES YES YES she is! We had the best time chatting. We confessed all our fears that we can't say on the boards. Sometimes if you even dare to worry about hard beds that are common in China or the smell of ciggie smoke that is common in CHina, someone will immediately smack you down. "But you're going to CHINA to adopt your BABY!" ie- you should be so appreciative that your desire for comfort doesn't matter any more. Uh... duh??? Look. We appreciate the baby aspect of the trip. We know the point is the baby. We're thrilled beyond words.

However.

We're human. Yeah we KNOW it's another country and yeah we KNOW certain aspects will be alien to us. But we also have the right to be worried about desiring creature comforts. Me? I want to be 100 percent for this baby who needs me so desperately to be on my A game. I want to be prepared for the aspects that may make me feel less than stellar. That doesn't make me appreciate the baby any less. It doesn't make me appreciate the adventure any less. I'm an info junkie. I think that's a much smarter approach than the LA LA LA NEVER QUESTION ANYTHING approach.

So who would my husband and I be in the travel group? What personality type would we represent?

The fun ones. Duh!

Right now my daughter keeps calling the British Tester Gal who tests your microphone on Skype. She's a recorded message, but my daughter doesn't know that. She has the mic in her hand and she's singing Wiggles songs. In an hour, my pals from CHina will be online. Maybe she can sing Fruit Salad for them or something.

2 comments:

BekkiBoo aka tubelessstl said...

This is just amazing that you can connect with live people across the world like this. Loving the updates. I still can't believe you will be traveling soon. Well worth the wait from the beginning of the process. Oh, so can you have your chat friends from China ship all your handbags back to the U.S. that you will be able to score?

Mutha Mae said...

That's the plan, B. And the sunglasses. Oooh the sunglasses. Accessories accessories.... yeah yeah!