So this seems to be the week to get sick. In three days we've had three different teachers, and unfortunately I'm able to use our new vocabulary from book 2: "我感冒了" or "I got a cold." Or perhaps is 我生病了, I got sick. Either way I'm feeling under this dreary weather. Apparently the temperature is supposed to drop from its lofty 32+C to about 21C this weekend, but I haven't confirmed the fact. I have rarely experienced such temperamental weather.

But besides learning how to say I'm sick and my throat hurts and I have a serious illness, I've also been finding Taiwanese dramas to be quite interesting. Of course the English subtitles are one of the reasons.

Although right now I can actually understand what people say some of the time - make that a very small percent of the time - there are myriads of topics we haven't yet discussed in our uh, beginner-intermediate level. But! I now have some friends in book 4, "Class 4" as I like to call them, and as I hang out with them I get to hear their conversation, which makes me envious of course, since they can talk about anything from shopping to drugs. But it's incentive for me. I only hope to one day be able to really converse on their level with them. 

Yes, there's only so much you can learn in one day. Today after class one of my friends said "Don't! Don't talk in Chinese! I've just had 3 hours of class and I had to speak almost half of the time and I just can't take it anymore!"

So there are times when you've had just about all the language learning you can take before your brain tells you firmly that it will not be accepting any new information. That has happened many times to me, where I've stumbled out of the classroom dazed and weary and unable to form a proper sentence in any language.

But I'm pleased to see improvement in my speaking. Except, today one of my friends asked me in Chinese about my language improvement, and I had to ask him to repeat himself many times, so sadly, I think my improvement, while existent, is still slow and sometimes slower. But I press on! Mostly because, um, I did pay for the whole term :D oh yes, and because I enjoy it!

Right now it's evening and my energy is slowing disappearing. The weekends always get busy, but this weekend I'm afraid I'll have to stay and rest a bit. Argh. I hate missing the social life. Well perhaps I shall blog about it. Perhaps tomorrow morning when I wake up again at 3:30 I shall write a blog about the 半夜 or midnight (I think).

(Because Chinese has so many similar sounds and detailed characters, if I write just one line a little shorter than it's supposed to be written, it could potentially change the whole meaning of the character :) Details are important in writing Chinese characters, as I am finding out. Sometimes I tell myself stories to help remember, "the ski character has snow on top and a pair of skis below." 雪

And today we learned why in Chinese you always say East or West first when giving directions, instead of saying north or south first like we do in English. For example, instead of "northeast" you'd say "eastnorth." The reason our teacher gave us was because of the sun going from the east to the west, so the directions follow the sun :) I thought that was very interesting.

There are other interesting stories in Chinese characters that make so much sense when you hear them. The character for day 日 originally was the shape of a sun with a dot in the middle, and the character for moon 月 was originally shaped like a moon. It's fun to write the characters!

Well I shall go in search of some food and then get some rest. Have a lovely weekend on all sides of the globe!

until next time!

What time is it? 現在幾點?

I'm doing it! I'm writing in Chinese! The nice thing is that I've learned a lot of handy repeatable words such as "he/she" and "want" and "don't want" and some other random nouns and verbs, so I can write a nice essay, and if you couldn't read it you'd be impressed, but if you could, you'd quickly see that I'm basically repeating myself and my 30+ words :D hehe. Ok, maybe I know more than 30 words, but the more I learn, the more I want to express myself, and the more limited my vocabulary seems.

The first week of class was exciting - I was actually getting to talk in Chinese! I hadn't done that in years The second week of class was even more exciting - I was learning new vocabulary and was able to talk even more about my daily life! The third week of class I began to feel more comfortable with speaking, and now, the 4th week, I'm beginning to become impatient, "Why can't I express myself more clearly?" I demand to know. But when I stay up too late at night, endless checking friends' posts on facebook and writing long e-mails home, a thought manages to crawl into a tiny space in my brain that's open '24 hours' and make itself known that perhaps lack of sleep is one obstacle to my learning at a faster speed, that and the fact that I decided to tackle Chinese, one of hardest languages in the world I've heard, or 聽說, in Chinese.

So right now I'm not sure why I'm awake at such an unearthly hour, and writing about the consequences of staying up late, of all things. Why am I not resting? Who knows. Taipei doesn't seem to sleep at night, which makes me want to stay up too. Why miss out on something exciting?

Except tomorrow I have another dictation quiz and we're starting on book two! I am so excited! Oh the simple joys of a beginner language student :D so now I'm not sure what time it is, but as I peer through half-closed eye lids, I think my computer clock it says it's almost midnight...hm...how do you say that in Chinese? I forgot. No wonder, my brain must've fallen alseep when we learned that in class. Hm.

Ok, I'm convinced. I shall go to bed. After I finish checking my 3 other e-mail accounts of course...

until next time,

:)

Learning and Still "Teaching"

Today I'm back online in blog land. It's been way too long, and though I've thought often of updating my blog with my current whereabouts, I always put it off in favor of something more pressing like researching second hand kitchen appliances to buy to add to my collection in my new room.

So I'm back in Taiwan, this time as a student, and I am really enjoying this new position. It's already been over 3 weeks since classes began, and already I can understand a few simple phrases in Chinese spoken at regular speed. That is definitely improvement, as when I first returned I still could not understand anything. I am trying to slowly transition my accent from a thick Beijing accent to a softer Taiwanese accent, so I don't stick out so much when I talk :)

This week we are learning about the weather. The weather is also giving us much to talk about as it is constantly changing. It seems that "qiutian" (pronounced 'tyo tien') or "autumn" may actually be making an appearance. The temperature has dropped a few degrees and it feels much cooler outside. I'm very grateful, as my room is on the 4th floor, and as you know, heat rises, and the higher you live, the hotter you apartment will be, as least I am finding that out.

We are still in the very beginning level of Chinese, but we are fast approaching book 2, and are very much excited at the idea. We will soon graduate to harder lessons and more complex homework. Today we had our first preview of future class 'presentations.' We had to introduce a country and talk about its weather for 1-3 minutes. I chose northern California, and 1 minute :) I talked about how strange (ji gui) the weather is becoming, since it snowed last May. I didn't have a lot more to say after I described the sunny aspect and the occasional rain and the nice temperatures most of the year. My limited vocabulary kind of stopped me after that point.

My classmates are from all over the world. We have Asia, Europe, and North America and Latin America represented in our classroom. It's really quite exciting.

The title of this post is "Learning and Still 'Teaching' " because I can't help but continue 'teaching' or telling everyone I know about the useful information I'm learning, such as where the library is and where the good restaurants are. I couldn't help but tell all my friends about how to get a library card and after a couple trips at least 8 of my friends now have library cards and 4 know where the media center is, where you can watch movies :)

Well it's getting late so I shall begin to end here. One last thing - something I do not cherish about Taipei is the enormous and speedy cockroaches that meet me on the stairs with beady eyes (I think) in the middle of a dark night. Thankfully I've found that light is one weapon I can use against them, and I happily shine my small beam from my small flashlight on them, but we always end up in a dance - I call it the cockroach dance, because usually the cockroach is faster and more scared than me so he usually gets to go where he wants and I have to just jump out of the way. Thankfully not too many have charged towards me, and thankfully I'm still at least 50x times their size (just a random number). But still, I could do without them, as well as the anonymous bugs that have bitten me in at least 14 different places. (I was careful to count my bug-battle scars so I could tell people so they could feel sorry for me. But that's just how a city-raised girl like me feels in regard to insects.)

So until next time, but seeing as how regularly I write, that may not be until next year, at which point I shall probably write in Chinese and you won't be able to understand it anyway unless you use google translate (which I probably will use to write it anyway), until then, have a great time!

:)