Hi Baby

I am standing up eating peanuts out of a plastic cup. Elisa walks up to me and beckons me to “my chair” and asks me to sit down. I don’t sit down so she climbs up on to the chair herself and sits down, as it to demonstrate to me what she means. She asks me to sit down again and I oblige. She does this because most nights at this time I sit in my chair and have a handful of peanuts and read The Chronicle on my Kindle. So once I am seated, Elisa climbs down and stands next to my chair and asks for a peanut as this is her shared nightly ritual with me. I tell her “just one” and she nods and greedily eats the half peanut I give her. She waits a moment and asks for another. I say “last one” and she says “last one”. A moment passes and she says “last one” and I hand her another. I check with Yang if Elisa knows what “last one” means in English and indeed Elisa knows; we confirm by having her ask for “last one” in Chinese. That said, I’m pretty sure our Ayi thinks “last one” means “peanut”.

There is a fair number of foreigners in our complex and Elisa has started greeting them with “Hi baby!”. Why, you ask? Or maybe you’ve already figured it out. It’s because foreigners greet her this way and she thinks this is the way you greet someone in English.

Yang has been on a fitness craze since our Alaskan vacation. Workout in the morning with me (don’t go there), tennis during the day, Mahjong at night. After a few weeks, she’s been getting pretty fit and it is starting to show. In fact, when she walked through starbucks today a foreigner walked up to her and said “Hi Baby!”. I can only hope Elisa was with her.