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!