We were a simple pair at our Chinese lessons. It must have nearly driven the teacher mad. My most unfortunate moment came when we were practicing sentences and she asked us ‘what is your teacher’s name?’ and we had no idea. After staring at each other wildly for a few minutes I said “Liu”, trying to sound confident as though I had not forgotten. The GF perked up and said ‘Laoshi Liu’. Wrong! said the teacher, so he corrected himself: ‘Liu Laoshi’ said he, and looked up expectantly, waiting for a nod. Wrong again, ‘Fang Laoshi,’ she said with a sigh. The GF blushed, stumbled over himself and finally said, ‘How do you say sorry?” And she replied “Don’t worry about knowing how to say sorry, just try to remember your pronouns”. Which tells you where we were in our lesson.
In the second half of the lesson we were slightly better so she also cheered up a bit and as we were practicing large numbers, she suddenly leapt across the room, fist outstretched, and then bellowed in triumph. She opened up a red-streaked fist: ‘I killed it and it was full of blood!’ she crowed, and then disappeared to wash her hands while I sat with mid-way through reading out a seven-digit number.