Work journal, Day 12

I’ve been getting more assignments, which has helped alleviate the boredom in some degree.  In the past few days, I’ve translated a couple letters from a French cosmetics company to the French Embassy and the French Chamber of Commerce and then letters regarding those from those organizations to a Beijing court (the company was asking for some political influence to help it win a court case), which was very interesting and made me feel important, I have translated the resume of one of the partners into English, and I have redone LexField’s official stationery design (because Yi Lushi thought I was good at technical stuff – where on my resume does it say that?!), and I have edited a good chunk of the English website and several other documents.  Last Friday, I taught an English class to about 30 of the people in the firm, going over small grammar issues and how to say things more directly.  They enjoyed it, although some people wanted me to speak English while giving the presentation.  Lots of people were surprised that I wasn’t nervous giving a presentation – one of the many blessings of having served a mission.

I go out to lunch most every day with three other guys from the patent team, Shizhao Liu, Shuo Liang, and Tong Qi.  Shizhao is a year younger than me and a funny guy.  He’s the one who plays the saxophone, and he’s always buying things online and complaining about shipping and credit cards and stuff.  Shuo is probably 28 or so and married; he’s kind of the ringleader of the three of them.  Tong is quiet and reserved – he asks me questions about America sometimes, but I know hardly anything about him.  I join in their conversations at lunch except when I don’t understand what they’re talking about, which is maybe 10-15% of the time, and then I follow along and pretend I get it anyway.

We get off work at 5 on Fridays!  Meaning today!  I’m looking forward to the weekend.  Next week I need to be more proactive in trying to get to know what other people around here do on a daily basis, instead of doing my own thing.  It would be cool to go to the court and file briefs or listen to a hearing if anyone has one coming up.