My Fake Date

So last night I went on a “date” with Yvonne, a Chinese girl who is the tutor of Jenny and Callie, and we’ve been joking with each other that we’re dating, so tonight we went on a date.

I’ve been pulling all the stops with this joke, so now you get to "hear" how terrible I am at romance. Even fake romance, where there is no pressure.

When I was in Shenzhen she sent a New Year’s text in Chinese, to which I responded, “You love me? What? I can’t read Chinese.” She responded that she loved me and “happy new year” and so I replied jokingly with “If you love me, then we should date”. The response was “hao” or “Ok”.

It felt like a challenge to go over the top. This is probably why I've never had a real date.

For Valentine’s day I bought Yvonne a set of matching rings and necklaces (sets for both male and female together) and hid the female portion in a heart-shaped container of rose soaps. Then I bought a pink mirror, placed it on top of the soaps and handed everything to Yvonne when she got back two days ago. This was after asking her if she would be comfortable if I bought her gifts for Valentine's day, because though this is a joke, I don’t want to make her uncomfortable with it.

Last night she asked me if I wanted to go on a date today, and I agreed because it would be fun. I’ve never been on a date before, and figure I might as well enjoy myself on a fake date, because I can go a little over the top and we can both laugh at my being silly.

Tonight we went to the restaurant we took Callie, same seat and everything, except this time they were not out of food. I ordered a bottle of red wine, two desserts of tiramisu, pizza and popcorn chicken. Truly, only the finest food was for us tonight. The glasses for the wine were huge! And they brought out the tiramisu first- which we were both confused at, but it worked. We talked about her family, talked about what she wants to do, we joked about what we wished for with our different lanterns during the holidays and we looked over at Long Ting park all lit up at night with lanterns. We didn’t finish all our wine, but since it was my treat and my suggestion and since she had given me earrings and a necklace as a gift, I paid for the dinner. At the end of it, I took her phone to call things even.

Huge portions of wine, but it was not all consumed.

We then went to Long Ting and looked around, joking that she was Helen of Troy (she brought it up and I ran with it). It wasn’t as busy, perhaps because the lantern festival was over, perhaps because it was a Thursday evening. There were people selling lanterns, though, and we bought one that said “ai” or “love” and we lit it using a fallen piece of fuel from someone else’s lantern.

Their lantern blew away without the fuel.

Totally stole their fire! HA!
(Dunno what that means)

Then it joined the other lanterns to make temporary stars in the sky.

http://youtu.be/IUEePucrZ8w

We walked back to campus, which was about a 40 minute walk. Here’s one of the parts from the back.

We held hands in the cutesy Chinese way- which is to hold pinkies, she told me. That way you can easily maneuver your hands into the pinky-thumb promise stuff. She said goodnight and I kissed her hand, telling her that she would always have one person who would think she is beautiful. ('cause RomComs tell me all dates end with a kiss and I think that is the least personal way to kiss someone). Then we said goodbye as she walked me to my door.

I turned to go.

But lo! She quickly ran back up the stairs-

-To get her phone. 

She got her phone back and we said goodbye again and hugged, and she left for her dorm. I'd completely forgotten I had taken it at this point.

It was a fun night, and I don’t regret doing it. It was kinda fun because it’s how dates are “supposed” to go, but by the end the awkwardness was gone and we were just having fun being ourselves. I do hope that though her parents want her to stop going to school (after she graduates), she’ll have enough confidence in herself to keep going forward and seeing new things. Plus, I hope she doesn’t doubt that she’s pretty. I know too many of my own students who doubt that; I know too many friends who doubt that.

As long as she had fun and believes in herself a little more, I think, it was worth it to have gone on this fake date. : ) 

(I'm sure that within a week or two I'll be pointing out to myself how much of this post is creeeeeeepy. That is for a later time.)