MY ROOMMATE JESSICA (狄可佳)

I've had this post in my drafts for ages now, but keep deleting half of it and then setting it aside and then editing it again. It's not easy to describe a friend, particularly someone who is (as Montana suggested), like an island for me here. I couldn't do without Jessica and I want you all to know how awesome she is, but I know I can't do her justice here, so for now, this will have to suffice.

Firstly, you should know that she doesn't like having her picture taken, so these socks, my birthday present to her, will have to do. She likes to pretend she's a bit of a grouch, but only as compared to me, seeing as some of my favorite things are whistling in the morning, jumping rope, and drinking Stolichnaya (a very dangerous $6.50 a bottle here). In reality, she is one of the most considerate, personable, generous, open-minded people I have ever encountered, but I suppose a veneer of negativity keeps her from being deluged with applications for friendship (also, you probably shouldn't cross her, ever). Sometimes she calls me Lele, short for 乐观 (leguan) or optimistic, and I call her Beibei, short for 悲观 (beiguan) or pessimistic. We make a good team.

The grumpy-face socks have a greater significance here in China, where for us foreigners the whole face-saving dance and concommitant avoidance of direct confrontation gets old quick, and it is a mighty relief to have someone to vent with. In Chinese you say 出气 (chu qi), or "to vent one's spleen". We make a habit of it.

Jessica and I only met at the hotel breakfast on the morning after we arrived here, but she has also spent the last two years in Bloomington, studying for her Masters in Chinese Pedagogy in the East Asian Language and Culture Department. Jessica already has a job lined up to teach Chinese at a private high school in Chicago next year, and actually taught first year Chinese last year at IU while I was in third year. Still, its awfully strange we never met.

We are studying at the same level here at IUP even though our abilities are very different. Jessica has been studying Chinese for five years off and on, and spent a year studying abroad in China while an undergrad. She has very precise tones, good pronunciation and excels at dealing with daily life. I have shoddy (but much improved tones) and can barely order a meal by myself, but I have an enormous vocabulary and in the right setting can talk easily about all sorts of big ideas. No, this has NOTHING to do with our individual personalities! How dare you think such a thing! We do, however, joke that our combined powers make for one excellent Chinese speaker.

We joke a lot actually, one might even say perpetually, and it is a very good thing. Readiness to laugh and to be delighted, rather than frustrated, by cultural dissimilarities and obstacles to going about daily tasks, is really a prerequisite for living here. Jessica is excellent to have around in all manner of situations, not only when being chased by douche or wandering the grasslands, but also in the wonderland of our local grocery store, or during long taxi rides when we entertain ourselves by looking up dirty words in our electronic dictionaries. She is particularly ace at responding to enthusiastic greetings on the subway. Not only does she have a powerful command of the Chinese expression meaning "piss off", but I once witnessed her befuddling of two Chinese dudes who she first spoke Japanese to and then explained to in flawless Mandarin that we really were Japanese. There is also no one aside from her that I would rather assist in wording a note to the upstairs neighbors humbly requesting that they reduce the volume on their amorous activities.

We're perfect roommates for the additional reason that she cooks to de-stress and I clean to de-stress, meaning that we enjoy delicious eats in highly sanitary conditions! She does a fantastic pumpkin soup, bean soup, persimmon pudding, banana bread, and seaweed and sesame salad; and uses her mean stir-fry skills to make tofu and veggies her bitch. This has given me ample practice in using the grammar pattern which foregrounds the object dispensed with, notably in the phrase 我把你做的饭吃完了 (literally: I took the food you made and ate it until it was gone).

Comprehende? She's rad.