What do the following words have in common?
hurt, kilometer, bell, tower, cute, adorable, dead, actor, fun, hip, tickle, and loud
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Well, they are the words I had to look up on Google Translate (and in the correct order) when Anders, Kiersten, Steven and I were getting foot massages in Beijing. In case you hadn’t heard, last Saturday in Beijing they had the worst rainfall in a 24 hour period in 61 years! Yep, we were on the Great Wall when it started. After a very long car ride back to the city we decided that the only indoor activity that would make the Great Disappointment better was to have a foot massage. Our wonderful tour guide knew right where to take us and we signed up for the cheap option. The price difference was the years of experience that the masseuses had. As it turns out, we were incredibly happy with our young uns. They were 19, 22, 22, and 20 years old and had less than 2 years experience. Kiersten and I had guys and Steven and Anders had girls. It only added to the fun factor.
We had a room to ourselves which turned out to be fortunate for the other clientele. I have never laughed so hard for 90 minutes in my life. AND they didn’t even speak English! I’m not sure whether I had a good massage or not because I was too busy laughing, speaking Chinese, and translating. After I introduced myself to my little cutie the fun started. I did a good job of communicating with them but it was highly entertaining. My masseuse had some acting talent, when I couldn’t understand he mimed and it was so funny. Anders’ masseuse told me that he was her first foreign client! Yeah, we had a laugh over that.
So here’s the reason for looking up the words:
hurt – I had to tell them that our feet were killing us because we had done an 8 kilometer walk the day before because we were unable to hail a taxi. Real problem in Beijing!
kilometer – see above
bell and tower – the sight where the above hike started. They were amazed when I told them where our hotel was and they realized how far we walked/hiked. 🙂
cute – I had to tell them how cute they were.
adorable – cute didn’t seem a strong enough adjective to describe them so I looked up adorable.
dead – Steve Jobs. We got into a discussion about pop culture and his name came up. What can I say, it’s not meant to be disrespectful.
actor – after the above word my masseuse decided to mime dead for us. I had to tell him that he was a good actor.
fun – as if they couldn’t tell how much fun we were having by the amount of laughter, I wanted to be sure they knew.
hip – where Steven’s masseuse determined he had a problem based on his feet.
tickle – I found out that my quadriceps are EXTREMELY ticklish.
loud – I apologized for the decibel level we were generating when Steven saw a man look in the frosted glass door for about 3 minutes. I didn’t want them to get in trouble and I was assured that it was OK.
All too soon our time was over. Unfortunately the only photo I took was of Anders and his masseuse. I really wish I had gotten a group photo but even without one it’s an experience that none of us (I mean all 8 of us, not just us Westerners) will ever forget. Talk about a great memory.
12PM – 81°