Re: Apartment: Mingmei & Donna
Mingmei grinned at Donna's enthusiasm about Cantonese. "Hmm-mm," she intoned, letting their dumplings simmer a bit in the boiling water on the stove. "Ni is you, che fan is the verb "to eat" umm...how to explain, the rest is the tense marker. And you are very close!" she remarked in excitement. "You said, Ni che le fan, which separates the verb. Just make sure the le is at the end and you're fine. We don't change the verbs like you do in English or other Latin languages do. We add the tense markers and such." She frowned, trying to figure out the best way to explain that in English to someone new.
At the compliment, Mingmei blushed slightly, then nodded her brief agreement, a bit embarrassed to acknowledge it outloud. "Oh, I didn't know many before I came here, so it's fascinating to learn new things about new worlds. I think. Multiverse theory aside, and everything." It was a concept Mingmei had only just begun trying to understand, but she wasn't about to dive into that just yet.
The dumplings were nearly done, and when Donna started talking about the reason why she'd came over, Mingmei lit up just as Donna had when speaking about language. "Oh, okay, great!" she remarked happily, looking over at the set up that Donna had laid out for them. She grinned over at her new friend. "And please, don't worry! You are very generous already. I worked at Starbucks to put myself through school and they were good, but you pay better." She laughed a little, not afraid to be upfront about that information. "If only my sister were here. She's very good at business. Her husband passed away recently and she took over his business and it's growing a lot." Mingmei nodded proudly.
"Let me take a look, and in about two minutes, you can put the dumplings on a plate and they are ready to eat!" Heading over to the set up that Donna had for them, Mingmei studied the information on the screens in front of her intently. Her gaze focused and she tuned out just about everything else around them, looking at the computer code and analyzing it as she went.