Work journal, Day 6

Days 3-5 were 马马虎虎; I started editing the English version of the website, and then on Tuesday Hester Qiu, who sits next to me, started asking me about my edits, so I explained some of the grammar and other things to her, and she suggested that we have a weekly legal drafting class.  So I emailed the partners, and Yi Yongmei got back to me, and now I’m teaching a class tomorrow!  So I’m more busy than I have been so far – I’ve been editing reports and the website and case synopses, and today I have to make a lesson plan and think about what I want to teach tomorrow so it will be effective and not just more memorization like they always learn English.  We’ll see how that turns out.

I had to open a Chinese bank account so they can pay me.  It’s about time I had one anyway, and now I can finally figure out how to buy things online here!  However, it was a bit of a 麻烦　this week, because when the secretary told me to open an account, she said, “There’s a Bank of China right around the corner there.”  I went over my lunch break, but I decided to get an account with Construction Bank instead, because it doesn’t cost me anything to withdraw there from my Bank of America account.  They were very professional and gave me preferential treatment – my number was 127, and the count was only at 93, but they directed me to an open service desk and let me start setting up my account right away, so it only took 20 minutes.  However, when I got back to the office and showed the secretary my card, she told me that I had to get a Bank of China account!  I had thought she was just recommending Bank of China because it was close.  Miscommunication.  So yesterday, I went over lunch to get yet another bank account set up.  It took the whole of lunch and then some (I didn’t get back to the office until just before 2); they weren’t nearly as nice as at Construction Bank.  They were professional, however, and now I have two Chinese bank accounts, where two days ago I had none.  Now to figure out Taobao!  I mean work on my lesson plan… J  When I got back, Sally and Hester (we share a cubicle block) were concerned that I hadn’t eaten.  I shouldn’t have told them that I didn’t eat lunch, because they were worried about me for the rest of the day, and Hester gave me some fruit.  It would have been fine, except that I was fasting, so it was slightly awkward.  I thanked them and put the fruit in my drawer for later.