english corridor

i try not to say no to anything, unless it's illegal, immoral, or hurtful toward others. this explains why patrick and i were at an "english corridor" last night. at cheers patrick had met poly, a business-english dual major at the university near my school. after a few dinners, he invited us to one of his clubs meetings to speak about christmas.

last night, patrick and i met at cheers an hour before the meeting to have dinner, and wet our whistles, to make the english a little smoother. after a delightful dinner of not one but two dishes of pork and mushrooms, we set off for the university. on the way, i decided to pick up 10 oranges. i'm on the verge of getting sick, and i've been eating about 5 a day. i figured by buying 10, i wouldn't have to by more for at least another day.

we met poly in front of the library, and he gave me santa hat. since i am now sporting my semi-annual beard, the obvious santa claus references were made, and we walked towards the dorm where the meeting was being held. when we entered, things became surreal. the club, or audience, was made up of about 100 girls and maybe 30 guys. all of them swarmed us when we entered, beatle mania style. i was surrounded. girls had their cellphones up and were taking videos, another was taking pictures with a camera.

soon one of the organizers came over and asked me to make a speech about christmas, or sing a song. i was a bit overwhelmed, so i thought i might sing jingle bells, get some crowd participation, and move on from there. they got into jingle bells (albeit i only heard my voice on the verse) and by the time we were done, they had given me a bit more space.

at that point it devolved into a question and answer period, which was something i could handle. what do you do for christmas? what music do you listen to? what movies do you like? etc. etc. one girl's question was, "do you have any gifts that you will give us?" i couldn't imagine the sort of miser who would hoard oranges, so i offered my flimsy plastic bag up to the mob. i began to hand them out when the girls began to grab at them. eventually the bag was literally in shreds and the oranges were gone. it was like they had been autographed by jay chou or something.

for the most part, everyone was very nice. there were a few faux pas, like when one girl told me my chinese accent was "awful", and the other girl who suggested that I "work out more." aside from that, it was nice to have people take an interest in me.

now as for the question of going again next week, that's still up in the air. like, way up.