Wo3 xue4xi4 Han4yu3!

First and foremost, fame and glory belong to Celia for correctly naming both mystery fruits (mangosteen and rambutan) in the latest installment of Food Fight.  Celia, I looked into mail ordering you some, but I'll admit the cost was prohibitive. From now on, I'll be posting cheap and readily available mystery foods!

So we've been taking Chinese lessons for about 6 weeks now, and I'm really enjoying it! It's amazing how empowering it is when the taxi drivers and store clerks understand what you're saying! Of course, a 2 year old probably has a bigger vocabulary than me, but at least I'm not getting blank stares all the time! Our first two months we collected business cards from all the restaurants and shops we liked, so we could show them to the cab drivers. No more! It's qu4 bu4xing2 jie1 and zai4 zher4 ting2 or bust! Alot of "this is X" and "that is Y" interspersed with a healthy dose of "I don't speak very well" (we can say this VERY well) and "please repeat that." My latest triumph was finding a twin size memory foam mattress topper for our rock hard mattress and being about to say "Excuse me. This is too small. I want big."  And having the clerk understand and telling me the price for the right size--$300!! ridiculous! We plan to stop by Costco in Australia in July and come back with one for a fraction of the cost. 

The best part is that our teacher wants to improve her English, so on top of 2 lessons a week, she and I are now getting together 1-2 times a week to practice speaking in Chinese and English. She's hoping to take the TOEFL and wants to improve her  already impressive vocabulary (I doubt I'll ever need to know puckish and primoridal in Chinese!) and in exchange is helping me practice Chinese and showing me more of Jiangyin off the beaten path. We're going to lunch on Friday--she asked what I liked, and I told her, "if you like it, I'll try it." Here's hoping I don't live to regret those words!