Two days, two interesting experiences

So yesterday, I was at work at the IMAX, waiting for the previous show to get out so I could let the new one inside.  It's my job; it's what I do.  Anyway, about 40 minutes before the show gets out, I hear a couple coming down the ramp.  As I listen, I start to wonder: "Is that Mandarin Chinese?"  Once they reached the bottom, I could see they were indeed Asian, but it would be bad of me to simply assume that they were speaking Mandarin because they looked the part.  After all, they could be any generation of Americans and not know a lick of Chinese.  In fack, the guy had almost no foreign accent.  So I answered their questions and they went off a little bit.  But as they went off, I began to listen again, and they were speaking Mandarin!  So, in an effort to be polite, I asked them what language they were speaking.  They told me Mandarin, and the next thing out of my mouth was the Mandarin phrase, "You can speak Mandarin?"

From there, we had a half an hour conversation almost entirely in Chinese about China, my experiences there, the woman's life there, her job as a teacher of Mandarin, and why I chose to study.

It was glorious.  I understood almost everything.  And really, that's why I took the language. :)

Bad part of China; it has somewhat made me immune to sirens.  I swear, I did not even consciously hear the siren of the ambulance until someone pointed it out to me as I'm halfway into the street with it coming down the hill.  I didn't even notice!  I felt like such a jackass, but I remembered that in Suzhou, we'd often hear sirens, but we could still cross the streets simply because the streets were so full of cars, there was no way for the ambulance to drive through them.

A bit of a reverse culture shock there.