Me no speak engrish

This morning, I rode the bus to work. It offers me 30 minutes of down time before I walk into my cubicle and start the day's work. Today I brought my knitting project with me and started knitting away. A couple stops after mine, a chinese couple got on and sat across from me. I knew the moment the chinese lady sat down that she was looking at me. I don't like to talk to strangers so i tried to avoid eye contact. She kept her eyes on me though and I caved in - i looked up at her and she immediately took that connection to ask me what i was knitting. She tried to talk to me in Mandarin and i was actually quite sad that I was unable to communicate with her. It seemed like she was fairly excited though to be able to talk with me even in her broken and limited English. She looked through my yarn bag to see what kind of yarn I was using and then she also took hold of my scarf to examine the pattern. She was acutally pretty forward. She told me she likes knitting very much. It's odd - my first reaction was that she would be the naggy elderly type - maybe she would criticize my knit-work or something. But she was actually quite friendly and possibly even brightened up my day. She reminded me of my mom :) Somehow, as you get older, you start to appreciate your parents more. funny how that is. As the lady approached her bus stop, she told me that she was going to the community center to exercise - to practice kung fu (here, she gave a few punches to the air). I thought that was hilarious. I should take the bus more often - maybe i'll see her again.