a glimpse into the awkwardness that is my life- as my roommate and i will both be out of town for the holidays, we have asked one of our friends to watch our precious cat for us. our spare key has gone missing, and so we had to make a copy of the key so that Carmen could get into our house to feed the cat. although i'm pretty much always a failure at these kinds of things, i was nominated to go make a copy of the key. i felt like i had seen key copying places all over, so i left my apartment with key and money in hand to find one. not one block from my apartment, i saw a key place, and thought to myself, "oh, how lucky." i had forgotten how to say both "key" and "copy," but trusting my ingenuity to pull me through, i entered the store. i walked up to the woman sitting behind the desk, and pulled out my key, and said, "i want this." She looked at me blankly, and all of a sudden i realized my mistake. the storefront had said "golden key" and had a picture of a key, so i had assumed that it was a key copying place. not so. i had actually just walked into a well-established real estate firm. i mean it didn't even look like a key copying place, and there were pictures of houses all over. that woman must have thought i was the stupidest person alive. she looked from my confused face to the key i held in my hand, and figured out what i had thought, and said (in chinese) "no. this is not a place to get keys copied. you'll have to go somewhere else." won't be going back there any time soon.