Adventures in Language

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People back home: "So...are you fluent in Chinese yet?"

Us: "Yeah...we know how to say that we like to wash our clothes and that we eat eggplant. That counts, right?"

I realize we haven't updated anyone lately on how our language acquisition is going, so I've decided to do just that. As you know, we attend Chinese class every Wednesday and Friday afternoon in the city center of Shenzhen. Our teacher last semester was awesome (all the teachers are from Shenzhen University) and we were really hoping we'd have her again but because of low class enrollment, they basically cancelled our level one class and put us all in the more relaxed level one class. I now feel like a genius and Martin is enjoying the pace of the class. Our new teacher is also pretty cool and very easy to understand, so that's nice. I'm sure we'd have picked up more of the language by now had we not come to China together- but as it is, we have each other to speak English to all day as well as our two contact teachers. The foreign teacher in our place last year got really good really fast, primarily because he was out here in the middle of nowhere Bao'an by himself. Yeah, we're not that cool, sorry.

I definitely understand way more than I can speak. Martin has perfected saying "I don't understand" with a smile and turning to me to see if I can translate. Usually I understand the gist of what was said but can't quite formulate a sentence to respond. Martin's more vocal with trying his Chinese out on people, regardless of how badly it comes out and I am always a little more reserved. A few funny interactions we've had recently:

~ Our guards on campus literally just stand around and probably have the most boring job in all of China, so they're always eager to talk to us, even if it's just a quick "HELLO!" with a smile. There's one guy that always tries to say way more to us and we usually end up in an awkward situation of just shaking our heads, laughing and telling him we don't really understand. I've been getting braver though, and trying to answer his questions and ask something back. Last week, he asked where I was going and I managed to basically tell him that I was going to eat my room. He laughed for a bit, told me I could and then I was trying to backtrack and figure out how to say the right thing. I'm sure that entertained him enough for a couple days. We've recently learned that he knows more English than he lets on...he's been saying words in English if we say we don't understand the Chinese word!

~Our school driver takes us to Chinese class every Wednesday and Friday, which is about a 40 min-1 hour drive. During this time, we pull out our Chinese book and try to ask him random questions like "When's your birthday? Do you like bananas? Do you like eggplant?" He gets a big kick out of it and in the last few weeks has started to ask us to teach him the English equivalent of whatever he says in Chinese. We also listen to Chinese music the whole time, and he and Martin occasionally sing along-- this includes both of them yelling "in the house!" in the middle of one song when the singers take a break from Chinese to throw that little English rap in.

~Coming home from Chinese class requires that we take an express bus to the Shenzhen airport and then another public bus 2 stops away to our place. Taxi drivers love swarming the foreigners, and this past week Martin gave one of them a big chuckle. He approached us with the typical yell of "Taxi?!" to which Martin very slowly and loudly said in Chinese "3. 2. 7. Public Bus! Four kuai!" The driver was highly entertained by this and it gave us both a good laugh too. Take that taxi driver, we're not paying you 50 kuai when we can take the bus for 2 each, you talked to the wrong foreigners!

~Knowing more Chinese also has an advantage in the classroom-- I now understand some of what my kids are saying when they don't know the English for something but still call out in Chinese and can say "yes, that's it, now who knows the English word?" They also love helping me learn how to say "birthday" in Chinese (I suck at the "ri" sound) and get a good laugh when I yell " are you crazy?!" or "be quiet!" in Chinese.

All that being said, I don't think Chinese is a language either of us will ever fully grasp. We're constantly being corrected on our tones, though they always sound the same to us. We've come a long way from not even knowing how to say "Thank you" correctly though and are both having a blast with it, which is the most important part. 😊

On a different note, let me give you a quick recap of our week:

~Wednesday was St Patricks Day. Neither of us have really ever done much for this holiday, but we met up with some CTLC friends at a restaurant named "Expats" for calzones and beer after Chinese class and then just came home. 😊

~This past weekend was spent in Hong Kong with Elyse and Pete. The four of us and Kris&Kelly met up Friday night to see Alice in Wonderland 3D (verdict? cool graphics, boring storyline) and then K&K went their separate way. Saturday morning the four of us ventured out to Lantau Island, the area of Hong Kong where the airport, Disneyland and Tian Tan Buddha all are. We enjoyed a most beautiful day of riding the Ngong Ping Cable car (longest in the world) out to the area where the Buddha is and being tourists for a day. The scenery from the cable car was beautiful but a bit scary-- on the way back we were stopped for about 5 minutes and just dangling in the air-- definitely not my favorite moment! We spent the evening eating Mexican food, drinking not-so-great wine and beer and just chatting/laughing. Crossed off another experience in HK we wanted to do before leaving and had a great time with friends!

~This next weekend we're heading to Macau, a special administrative region of China just an hour ferry ride away, with our typical group of friends to celebrate Pete's 30th birthday!

Still loving every minute of life here but also getting excited to be back. 😊

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Comments

[mama clare]

I'm fluent
I can still say hi and bye and now sit down so does that qualify me? Loved this write up and glad you are getting even better at communicating and still laughing about it all.