Failure to Get Off... Again

So today we had our weekly ritual:  review session, followed by a written exam, followed by an oral exam.  The review session covered 23 grammatical topics, although our teacher has a habit of leaving a the number off off the last topic so it seems like there's only 22.  The written exam was fine; I was mostly concerned with finishing so I could get out of the room. 

The oral exam was...  sigh.  I've been saying to my roommate how much I hate our oral exam topics.  Today's topics were 1)  are men and women equal in your country?  2)  what is your opinion on jobs?  and  3)  compare Chinese New Year to the most important festival in your country.  Both topics 1 and 2 are irritatingly broad, and both NOT learner-centered.  Topic number 3 involves a lot of special vocabulary you would only use during those times of the year. 

So the teachers laid out three strips of paper, each with a topic.  I went for the biggest one, which is topic number one, the status of women; a topic that will either make me mad or make me totally bored.  I regaled them about how women earn less money for the same job, how there are few powerful women in the government, and that many women who learn to succeed in a man's world do it by "thinking like a man," that is.  Please forgive me, feminists, I was doing my best to earn an oral exam grade. 

I talked about how girls are treated in grade school, but once they come to high school, they don't want to appear too smart.  And that I wouldn't send a daughter of my own to such a school. The teachers asked if I wanted a smart wife or a pretty wife, and I said I wanted a wife who is smart, pretty, and earns a lot of money, and it's a fallacy to ask me which one I prefer, one or the other.  And that being a smart person was a choice. 

Afterward, the teacher said, ok, I see that you believe men should be superior to women. 

WHAT?  THAT'S NOT WHAT I SAID! 

I think she said she was just kidding, but that kind of humor is very not Chinese. 

Later, I went to lunch with X and E, we made fish faces at the teacher we were sitting with.  X had some corn wrapped in a plastic baggie, and E bit through the baggie and ate some corn, swallowing some plastic... at least so it seemed to me.  I told him I wanted him to eat food. 

Later, we walked in the heat to the ticket office.  It was closed for lunch, so we walked to the bus stop and took the 43 until we were completely lost.  We got off and got in a taxi for the train station... and realized we were at the same place we started, we had gone in a big circle. 

By some miracle we got two tickets to Shanghai, leaving at tonight at seven and returning Sunday morning.  We taxied back to the dorm. 

I tried to make a hotel reservation online, but I lost the lady for a second.  When I finally heard her again, she was speaking Chinese, mispronouncing my name horribly.  She couldn't hear me, so I heard her say "screw it" and hang up.