Today I went to the bakery to get a loaf of bread and I opted for some yummy cookies too. I stood in line at the cash register and the look on the face of the cashier was priceless. A foreigner is here how do I tell her how much this cost. See I didn’t open with ‘Nihao’ hello or ‘Duoshao tian’ how much is it. I looked at her and she said ‘Ershi kuai wu’ I repeated her and went about getting the money ‘ershi kuai wu’ is ‘20.5’. There was Chinese teacher behind me and after I repeated the amount she went ‘huh’ then the other girl at the counter bagged my purchase and I said ‘xiexie’ thank you to her. I heard the Chinese teacher say ‘Ta de Zhong wen hen hao.’ ‘Her Chinese is very good.’ I left the store after saying Bye-bye which is more common than ‘zaijian’ good bye. Once outside I had a good laugh. It is always fun when someone new hears me speak Chinese because they usually figure another foreigner who won’t speak our language.
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