I rely on Google Translate on my cell phone to facilitate about 90% of the conversations I have with our driver. I type in what I want in English, translate it to Mandarin, and then copy it into a text to send to him. He then replies in Mandarin and I translate it to figure out his response. Some days this process is rather comical, especially when we are sitting right next to each other in the car.
Today happens to be National Women's Day. I thought it was a joke, certainly not something that people would actually take off work for until my Mandarin tutor, who is employed by John Deere, informed me that she, as well as all other women at Deere, were taking the afternoon off and therefore wouldn't be able to have my lesson.
I kindly text'd my driver to let him know (he drives her to our apartment). This was his response, as translated by Google:
Today is International Women's Day, the afternoon lesbians may have a holiday.
Maybe it's funny because our driver is a straight-laced, militant, never cracks a smile kind of guy but I've been trying to think what he might have said that would translate inadvertantly to "lesbians" and I can't land on anything. I've decided that he knows more about my tutor than I thought he did. At least that's what I'm going to say, it makes for a better story :-)
And oddly the best part of this story ends up being that John Deere graciously gave each woman a present in honor of this national holiday. The gift you may ask? Dish soap. Unbelievable, right?
