Helen

I tutor a 14-year-old Chinese girl named Helen on the weekends. The hourly pay is double what I get normally, so it’s nice to have a little extra cash on the weekends. In my contract, I am actually prohibited taking outside jobs, but the director of the Foreign Affairs office gave me the job. Helen is the daughter of her friend, apparently. It’s pretty China-tastic.

I have met with Helen three times now, the first time at the Shangri-La hotel in downtown Qingdao where I ate at an all-you-can-eat buffet called Café Yum. It was so good and I had all sorts of yummy food, including bread for the first time since leaving the States. I also had a freshly made chocolate crepe, marble-slab style ice cream, and real coffee! I basically got paid to eat and make little chatter with Helen.

Did I mention that her family is quite wealthy? Her dad is a bank executive with one of the larger banks over here and her mom works at the police station. She also has drivers, one of which is her uncle with a sweet mini van with a DVD player and GPS system built into the dash. And power doors! Her family owns several apartments/ homes throughout the city and seems to be very well off…. Understatement.

The second time I met with Helen, we watched “Twilight” and talked about the movie afterwards. This Saturday I made a little vocab and question worksheet for “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” which she also enjoyed. However, I think I have started a Twilight trend in her school.

She told her class monitor about the gloriousness that is Twilight and he watched it and had his parents buy the DVD for him. Now their entire class is watching the movie on Monday together. Helen’s parents purchased all four books for her (in English!) to read. This cracks me up, excites me, and scares me all at the same time.

Twilight is invading a middle school in Qingdao. Six days until New Moon! I mean, uh, what are you talking about?