Further life and times of *liltayinchina*

Today was my last with Ira. She will start up with Eileen after the Chinese New Year, which is February 18th this year.

We had a great talk today. I asked her what she wanted to talk with me about and she said, “Can I tell you about what I think and feel often?” Of course, I told her. She started telling me more about the cast of characters I’ve come to care about: Frances, Curious and Kate. She told me about some new players too.

We began our talk with the definition of the word “fickle”. Ira says that Frances is a little fickle when it comes to friendships. She likes to play with different people at different times and sometimes seems bored with Ira and what Ira likes to do. We discussed the differences between mental people and physical people. Ira loves sports and enjoys reading, but not with the devoted passion that Frances throws into her reading. There are two other girls that Ira felt she needed to introduce me to: Joyous and Catherine. Joyous sounds like a flirtatious, talkative, and fairly typical 6th grade girl. She enjoys being around boys and is very mental, according to Ira, but not in the intelligent way. She is always thinking and talking about what she’s been thinking about. She sees that Frances and Ira are good friends and tries to think up ways for her and Frances to be better friends. She is nice to Ira but Ira can’t tell if she’s really being nice or being nice for other reasons.

Catherine is a good friend of Ira’s too, but Frances and Catherine don’t get along so she tries to be friends with each girl out of site of the other. Catherine is friendly and beautiful and loves talking to new people. Ira thinks that Frances and Catherine are opposites. She thinks Joyous and Frances are opposites too, but Joyous acts like she wants to be friends with Frances very much so Ira is confused. Joyous gets in trouble because she’s always talking to boys. She told Ira recently that she wants to find a boyfriend for Frances. Matter-of-factly, Ira told me that she’s doubtful of this plan because Frances isn’t very friendly to boys and isn’t attractive to many of them either. Joyous has chosen a boy who attends the other school that is attached to our school. It’s the same school, except the Chinese and Math teachers aren’t as 1st rate as the ones that teach our students and foreign teachers don’t teach the English classes. Joyous has chosen a boy who excels in Math and who is really good at sports. Frances is terrible at sports and is so-so in Math. Apparently both children like to read and Joyous’s plan hinges on this fact.

And poor little Kate. Apparently Kate likes Curious very much but Curious doesn’t care much for her one way or the other. Curious leaves close to Ira and one day Kate was obsessing about Curious and wanting to see his house so she bugged Ira to take her there. Ira finally acquiesced and when she knocked on Curious’s door, he answered, surprised to see them. He looked a little put out and Ira stammered that Kate wanted to play with him and then ran off, leaving Kate on the doorstep. Later, Kate called to say that Curious had grudgingly taken her inside and that they’d played a new video game for a couple of hours. Kate is a girl and lost every time (direct quote from Ira), but if Ira had been playing she’s sure she could have beat Curious. She thinks that even Joyous or Frances could have beaten Curious. Kate isn’t good at anything, Ira told me. She amended this statement with, “But she’s good at eating and swimming!”

I asked Ira what her friends wanted to do and be when they grow up because we got on the subject of Bill Gates and Microsoft. She told me that Frances wanted to be a boss. It doesn’t matter what she is the boss of. Apparently Kate and Joyous want to be bosses also. Curious’s father is a judge and his mother is an official for the government, a high-up official. When they were all younger, Ira thought that Curious might grow up to be a tennis player or runner, but now she knows that his parents wouldn’t let him waste his brain like this. Instead, she’s afraid he will become a boss too. When I first met Ira, she told me that she wanted to be an engineer. I asked her more about this today and she grinned sheepishly, hiding her face in her hands for a minute and then told me that that night, she was nervous and shy and the first thing she knew popped in her head and she said it when I asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Engineer seemed like a good answer at the time, but she doesn’t want to be an engineer. Guess what she wants to be? A boss. I tried to get more information out of her regarding this curious answer, and she said, “We think that bosses have many people working below them, so, while everyone is doing the job, you can play or watch television!” Ahhhh…. I asked her if she thinks Bill Gates plays or watches television. She said, “Of course not! You can’t be the richest man in the world from playing, unless you play computers.” Excitingly enough, Catherine DOESN’T want to be a boss – she wants to be a TV interviewer. Ira thinks this is the perfect job for her.

We got on to the topic of music and I sang her the bits and pieces of songs that I know from singing Karaoke with Winnie (we went just last night, in fact). There is a very popular girl band here called S.H.E. The band has been popular for about two years now. Apparently they’ve been around longer, but one of the girls, who goes by the name Hebe, made comments about Taiwan and refused to take them back and so many people stopped listening to S.H.E. or buying any of their albums. Apparently the comments were that Taiwan was its own country and not part of China. This was a while ago, though and time has passed and people have forgotten or forgiven Hebe. I almost asked Ira what she thought, but decided better of the question.

Right before she went home today, she told me that Jade, her English co-teacher had asked her to write down and bring to class tomorrow, the lyrics to the remake of Uptown Girl that was just made. So, we looked up the lyrics and I wrote them down for her. She asked me how the song goes so I sang it too. Lucky for me, Winnie queued this song at KTV last night and I’d had a little practice.

All in all, it’s been a wonderful past couple of days. I’m going to miss my talks with Ira, but she’s promised to email and call me and will visit often when school is back in session. If I hear anymore about the saga of Curious or the catfights created by Joyous or the battle for a best friend for Ira, I’ll let you know!