Every little thing takes a while to explain and confirm for me in Chinese. By the end of every discussion I'm never 100% sure they said what I think they said. Context is very important to my understanding of spoken Chinese. If I'm in class, and I know what the teacher should be talking about I can pick out key words and retroactively piece them together to figure out the meaning. Chinese grammar is not like English, and word order is often reversed. For example, to say "after I studied last night I went to bed" you would say the equivalent of "I last night studied after went to bed". And that's a pretty simple concept to get used to. If i don't have context, like if a waitress or cab driver just starts talking to me, I'm initially very lost until I can sink a linguistic anchor into what they're saying by understanding one sentence or even one word. Chinese, while it's writing system is the most complex system ever devised, is a very simple spoken language. By that I mean some sentences or thoughts can be expressing in only a few syllables. This can be very useful, or very difficult to understand if you don't know their meaning, as the anchor can't be sunk into as many words.
So we met later in the afternoon, looked over my homework and reading for the night. I read over the words and he would help me with pronunciation. When I would ask a question he would explain it with a combination of very fast spoken chinese and cocktail napkin-esque diagrams. A phrase I've become very good at saying is "Please say again" and "I do/don't understand". We've met three times this week and I think my Chinese is progressing.
Last night a few of us went to an American pizza place called The Kro's Nest. It's actually some of the best pizza I've ever had. The Chinese don't really do cheese. I heard one time Asian cultures don't like the idea of spoiled milk protein, or whatever cheese is. I find that very hard to believe. There are some very disturbing dietary/hygienic habits here so I can't imagine cheese would turn anyone's stomach. (AND they like yogurt).
But you know who loves cheese? This guy. I had wanted some pizza for a while and I certainly got my fill. There are a surprising and statistically unlikely amount of Jewish people among the IES students. My point was that some of them are Kosher, which basically means vegetarian here in China. We got a half spinach and mushroom, half "Mighty Meat" pizza. I was a little unsure of how the rules of Kosher eating dealt with half and half pizza. It seemed that there was certainly meat and dairy on the same plate, moreover melting together in the same delicious pizza. Mark assured me that God would make an exception. Phewf.
We all went out to Wudaokou to ....watch the Grammies? They were projecting the coverage of the show on a large screen in a ex-pat bar above a bookstore called Lush. Was anyone else angry about Coldplay and their Sgt. Peppers outfits? Beside the super bowl, which doesn't really count as it was in my first few days here, watching the Grammies was my first American entertainment experience in China. It was so lame. Everything about that show was just so...lame. I don't really care about the Grammies in the first place, but it was borderline painful to watch this year. Everyone seemed to think the same thing. It was just so very unimportant.
The cab ride home was fun. I sat in the front seat to explain where we wanted to go and actually had a little conversation with the cab driver. It was simple and I often had to ask the meaning of words but practice is practice. It was the first time beside talking with teachers, that I felt competent and understood by the driver.
snow
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