new job maybe

So some young woman came after chinese class one day a couple weeks ago to see if people wanted to do voice recordings of children's books in english. I was super interested. She called me to come do a test recording and they liked my rendition of "little girl". So over 2 consecutive weekends, I spent 4 hours reading lines of an english book in a little girl voice. I believe these are English books for primary school children in china to purchase to help them with the test they have to take to get into middle schools. So I'm getting paid 150 yuan an hour (a little under $19) to do this, although I haven't gotten paid yet. hmm. she's supposed to contact me again this week. my father doesn't think I'm going to get paid, but she was super nice and it was professional, and I even met a guy who was recording after me that was in the same program as the guy who taught at my school last year. so I'm not really worried. and if anything, it's fun and a good experience. It's kind of weird because I just sit at a desk in the recording studio and read random lines slowly and clearly. They don't always go together logically because they're from different parts of the book, and I don't know what the other characters are going to say, but it's fun anyway. "Hi, my name is Amy." "This is my friend, Mickey." "My mother is a nurse." "How many are there?" and you know, the normal range of basic children's books.

visit

my mom and baba came to visit me for a week at the beginning of this month. it was a good time and they paid for all my stuff, so that's always nice. They stayed with me in shenzhen for 5 days. I worked for 2 of those days and they just hung out and helped me fix up my apartment a little. it's so much better now than it was when I first got here. I actually don't mind living there so much anymore. While they were here, I took them around to see the few sights here and to do some cheap shopping. but they didn't really buy anything. I took mom to get a hairwash/massage, which she liked. she also got her hair cut. baba said it looked better, but then the next day he said it looked messy again. oh well, I think it was fine. They ate street food too, which I think they liked. but they weren't as impressed as the rest of us who live here.

We went to Hong Kong for 3 days and that was nice. They could actually speak to people in cantonese and english, and not have to feel stupid because they can't speak mandarin. We saw the big Buddha on Lantau island, which was pretty cool. And we went to The Peak, a big mountaintop on Hong Kong Island filled with expensive restaurants and shops and stuff, but which has a great nighttime view of the city lights. We wandered around the cheap outdoor markets which was kinda interesting, but they were mostly all the same. And we saw my aunt's apartment, where nobody has lived for a long time, so it isn't really livable for me. And we saw the old Fong apartment building in Hung Hom, Kowloon, HK from 40 years ago. I think that was my favorite part. Baba said the tiles were the same on the building floors, and he remembered the little room where you put the trash. And where he used to throw trash out the windows down onto the stores below. But those windows are barred up now. And the street corner in front of a grocery store, which is now a restaurant, where he almost got kidnapped. Pretty cool stuff.