Exploding Rice and Constructive Criticism

Today's Chinese lesson was a disaster.

I had a mess to clean up and picked an episode that was too high for my level.

We started with learning how to use the word "would."
For example, how would you say, "If you hadn't gone to China, what would you be doing?"

Then, my tutor described how to make rice porridge and I re-told the procedure using a few newly learned words. We took a break and ate some porridge that had boiled onto the floor making a mess of starchy goo, a large puddle of glob. The porridge that had managed to stay in the pot had a bottom layer of burnt rice with a top layer of edible porridge. Note to self, when cooking porridge in a rice pot check regularly and don't wait till the cooker automatically turns off.

Next we watched a cartoon episode whose dialogue was way over my head. The father and son discussed promises and trust along with the habitats and toys of bears.

At the end of the lesson, I was told that I really need to work on my tones.

Ugh.... Discouraged am I.

I don't know how to work on my tones other than to go back to square one and start memorizing all of the tones of all of the vocabulary I already know. Does anyone know how to improve the tones of spoken Chinese?

In the Valley

Today is one of those sad days. In the cycle of living abroad, there are up days and down days. Today is a down day.

My Chinese lesson was excellent though. I was able to answer 5 questions about my childhood in a full story paragraph talking about my mother being afraid of me going to school on a school bus and getting lost at the age of 5 not knowing any Chinese and looking Chinese, talking about being yearbook editor in high school and not having a boyfriend, talking about making mud pies and going swimming in the front yard pond to gather clay at the bottom to make pots, the Alabama sun as the drying oven, and talking about the different animals we had on our farm. I was also able to listen to a joke on chinesepod and watch a Chinese cartoon before class and retell the joke and what the cartoon was about.

I feel though that my spoken Chinese has hit a wall. Everyday, I have been studying how to recognize characters and have been typing different dialogues and homework on the computer, but my spoken Chinese has taken a hit. I stutter along. I wonder if my brain can't do both at the same time. At some point everything will come together, right?

Back to the down day. Why today?

Well in a world where I spend a lot of time with students or had a week with a bit too much socializing, I need a break and just want to sit cooped up in the house knitting and having a Star Wars' marathon, eating ramen water heated by an electric kettle because my gas tank went empty the night before while cooking a bean soup. Cooped up is not a positive thing. It feels like being an old person like my grandmother when I was living with her. That world revolved around meals, TV shows, naps, when the mail arrived, and then bedtime. It had a quiet restless unproductive feel to it. But there are times during the week that I too feel the need for such a day but then once the day is over it feels not so good.

I did leave the house once today to have dinner at the restaurant mall, four stories of restaurants, had a plate of sizzling noodles, and eavesdropped on a couple with whom I was sharing a table with in the crowded restaurant. They spoke of the food, spicy, sweet. They spoke of the weather and of what majors are good to do in college. It was small talk boring talk but I understood it. If that is all couples talk about then the language barrier wouldn't be a problem if I wanted to date someone Chinese. I bought 50 miniature oranges from one of the many vendors pushing bikes around with baskets full of mini fruit. I ate candied strawberries on a stick and stopped at the new bakery where the workers speak English. Chinese bread tends to be sweet even the ones they claim are salty.

Now I am back home working on a blue striped sock.

Tomorrow will be another day. I've been invited on a bike ride. The people I went to Henan with during the summer will all be back in Xifeng for a week. It will be warming to my heart to be reunited with all of them.

Learning Chinese Characters

For some reason I have had a very bad attitude towards learning Chinese characters (hanzi). I started with the PC hanzi book and gave up after only two chapters. I felt discouraged at not being able to write the characters. For some reason, I had this idea that in order to learn characters I would have to be able to write them.

Learning Chinese vocabulary has so many steps:
1. Learn how to read pinyin
2. Remember the tones
3. Learn how to read hanzi
4. Learn how to write hanzi

So far I have only semi-mastered step 1 and I still sometimes make mistakes when I read pinyin.

This past week I had an epiphany.

To learn Chinese characters one does not have to write them. You can just read them and learn them through recognition!

I wish I had realized that earlier.

I can use a computer to do my homework instead of having to actually write out the characters. This makes learning the Chinese characters a lot easier! Yay!

General Update

Class

Wednesday I had listening class all day, a day without electricity. I had prepared a Halloween lesson plan; however, because of the lack of a computer, I was only able to do half of the lesson which was the vocabulary listening quiz, the history of Halloween, and the telling of a spooky story, "The Monkey's Paw" by W. W. Jacobs. The rest of the time we listened to each student's homework while writing down each question practicing listening to the different ways students pronounce words. Their homework was to ask 5 questions to their classmates, listen to the answers, write down what they heard and then present one question and answer to the class.

Yarn

I was asked to knit two hats. I finished both of them. I have found the bookmark crochet pattern that I will be using to make Christmas gifts. It is a pretty fast project. Today I made 5 of them.

Chinese Corner

Chinese corner with 11 people was a loud affair exactly how Chinese banquets should be which really indicates something positive about the 6 foreigner's Chinese. It was an 8 course meal: a salty instead of spicy hot pot filled with vegetables, plus other dishes, eggs and tomatoes, chicken with green peppers, a spicy string mushroom salad, eggplant, green beans, fried tofu, ending with a fermented rice egg soup that was sweet with kind of an alcohol after taste. Twas a cheap $20 and I should probably take pictures next time.

Chinese Class

FYI if you ever want to learn Chinese by yourself, Chinesepod is an excellent site plus they give PC volunteers a discount. Today I learned my first Chinese idiom: "Be there or be square." I am not really into learning idioms, slang, or bad words, but today while searching on youku.com for lessons, I found a 4 minute lesson on an idiom. I also found this guy from Africa teaching Chinese with like over 50 lessons. It is kind of strange watching an African guy teach you Chinese.

5th Year in PC

Currently I am in my fourth year with Peace Corps. Next summer will be the start of my 5th year. Shall I stay for that extra year? Peace Corps will pay for a month home leave. I feel that because I was evacuated out of Guinea and placed into a new country, I didn't really become a part of any local community in Africa. It really does take time to adjust to a new village and for that village to accept you. However, in China because I have been here for two years, I am connecting with people, making friends, learning the language and developing ideas for secondary projects. Plus I have a strong desire to see some of my students graduate. I would need a third year to continue down this path.

Health

I cooked a peanut butter stew the other night which included beef bones, mushrooms, bok choy, garlic, ginger, and potatoes. I left it out for over 24 hours believing that my apartment was as cold as a refrigerator; however, I was sadly mistaken and spent a night waking up every hour with stomach pain and a trips to the toilet. I think mushrooms are a tricky food for one's stomach, even my stomach which after 4 years overseas is not delicate at all.

Mood

My mood these days feels strong emotions brewing deep in my chest. I have a strong desire for isolation, solitude, and lonerville. I don't know why. I am happy when I leave the flat and interact with students and friends. I am happy when I participate in clubs, class, and dinners. I feel fine; however, I also feel a sense of freezing cold. Maybe as I sit in my 3 season sleeping bag, a hat on my head, a scarf around my neck, with three top layers, and three bottom layers including 3 articles of knitted clothing, the freezing cold is influencing my mood and piercing into the depth of my soul forcing me to face the dark personal issues that I have been hiding and avoiding so well.

Weather

Winter has arrived.

This semester's second Chinese lesson

My language learning has hit a wall, and I don't really know what to do next.

Today I had a fun language lesson of just talking in Chinese for an hour, writing down new vocabulary, and learning sentence structures for particular phrases that I wanted to use.

For some reason, I have a strong dislike and a very low motivation for trying to learn how to read, but maybe that is the next step that I really need to walk towards in my language learning. Is my dislike for reading the wall that I need to break through?

When I was in Africa, during Peace Corps French language lessons we had 4 hours of conversation a day. We sometimes learned new grammar if it came up while we were talking. We were building our vocabulary by using it and were learning how to just communicate with the vocabulary we already had.

In China, because my Chinese was non-existent, Peace Corps training was very structured with a book that we used 4 hours every day.

Now that my Chinese skills have reached a certain level, I just want to do it the African way, but is that really helpful?

Any Chinese learners out there with any advice?

Improve Chinese by Saturday Morning Cartoons

Back during Peace Corps training in Chengdu, I remember being excited about understanding a lot of the Chinese dialogue while watching a cartoon for 5-7 year old kids about a little boy and his parents.

Watching Chinese cartoons for children is probably an excellent way to improve one's listening skills and if you watch it with a language tutor probably will help improve one's vocabulary. I would love to watch fantasy and science fiction cartoons; however, the vocabulary and the situations the characters get into are too alien from Chinese used in everyday life. My language skills are not to that level yet. I am still working on being able to express my life story, dreams, and opinions in Chinese in a fluid way.

I am looking for Chinese cartoons for children that have everyday life situations. I would love to find the cartoon about the little boy and his two parents that I watched in Chengdu. Do you have any suggestions? I found this 大头儿子小头爸爸 cartoon. It is nice for language class because it is a 7 minute show.

Today's Language Lesson: Dreams

In Chinese class today, my tutor asked me "What are your dreams?"

I told her, "My dreams were to live in Africa and China."

She asked, "What are your dreams after China?"

I paused and realized I have accomplished my dreams and have no more dreams.

So what will drive me to the next stage of life?

The American dream?

Ha!

I fear the American dream of getting caught up in the working world of responsibility, working towards retirement for a safe haven in old age.

Doesn't 35 seem long enough, a long enough life of accomplishments and satisfaction for all that I have done.