Goals

What this episode covers

ldquo;Mr. Boone, you are asked to join Professor Kwok, along with Professor Holbrook, Professor Joyce Pfaff and her Husband, and Pat and Bill this evening at 6:30 PM. Please meet them here at 6:20 to take a bus to the restaurant.rdquo; I looked up upon hearing my namemdash;I was reading outside of the library on this particularly beautiful day, waiting for Cynthia to go to lunchmdash;to see Jasmine standing just left of center in front of me, ldquo;Please invite Cynthia as well.rdquo; The whole scene felt like it was out of a movie where the protagonist hallucinates people who tell him to go to certain places for meetings with other hallucinations that convince him to inadvertently do awful things; I felt like I was the protagonist in that movie and this imaginary person was tricking me into going somewhere where I would spend all of my money on a really expensive dinner for 8 that I would end up eating myself. This hallucinatory feeling was made even stronger by the fact that the sun was at a perfect angle to perfectly silhouette her face, making any attempt at seeing her blindingly impossible. Once I got over the surreal effect of feeling like I was in some kind of movie I realized how much of an honor it really is to be singled out for a dinner with the president of the college, and felt, once again, like a celebrity. Six weeks into my time here I still feel very much like a celebrity. There have been a number of odd occurences that have transpired in the last few weeks that reinforce the notion that a tall American guy my age is a rare sight around here. As an example of what I mean by this: I was out buying some things I needed a few days ago and as I was walking back to my dorm a group of high school aged kids stopped me outside of a restaurant and asked me to help them with something. I saw a camera and assumed they wanted my picture, because most of the time that's all it is. It is still a little odd having people randomly asking for my picture around here but that is not what these kids were after. Their request was actually pretty simple they wanted me to stand there and stare at one of the girls in their group for two minutes while they recorded it on the camera. It had to have been the longest two minutes of my life. Though I can understand why they wanted a video of the only American they've ever seen, why they would just have me stand there, motionless, emotionless, and expressionless, is still a total mystery. On the plus side you can probably find a really awkward video of me staring at a chinese girl on the internet somewhere. The dinner went from being at 6:30 to being at 7 and back to 6:30 again by the time we left. Cynthia and I weren't entirely sure where we were going, except that we had a business card for the place that Bill gave us to give to the driver. We were riding in the back of a minivan, with Professor Holbrook, our translator, riding shotgun and the Professors Pfaff riding in the middle. The trip probably took a little over a half hour, landing us, finally, at a restaurant somewhere near Junco, the giant all-in-one supermarket department store, like Super Target but bigger. We stepped out of the van and into the restaurant, which looked more like a small calligraphy gallery, and made our way up the stairs to the dining room, which felt more like a conference room than a restaurant. The room was a small room, but big for a Chinese restaurant dining room, with a round table in the middle, a mahjong table behind that, a flat-screen television and a computer tucked away in the corner. It had a private bathroom, and there were various pieces of art on the wall. A window looked out over the street below, which fact could only be derived based on the geography of the building as the drapes were pulled shut, and I spent a good amount of the time we were waiting for the rest of the party to get there, and while Holbrook ordered the tea, admiring the deacute;cor of the room. ...

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