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I had my first *real* telephone conversation today. (Chinese - English)This is usually what happensPHONE PHONE: Ring, ring ME: grrrr. I hate answering the phone PHONE: Ring, ring ME: Hello? MAN: Wei? Ni Hao? - Hi? Hello? ME: Hello? MAN: blah blah blah blah blahME: Ting bu dong - I don't understand MAN: blah blah blah blah blah (same thing, just slower)ME: I don't speak ChineseMAN: blah blah blah blah blahME: I'm sorry, I don't speak Chinese!MAN: blah blah blahME: (hang up)
But today was better!Here's what happened: (Chinese - English) PHONE: Ring, ringME: grrrr. I hate answering the phonePHONE: Ring, ringME: Hello?MAN: Wei? Ni Hao? - Hi? Hello?Me: Hello?MAN: Blah, blah, blah Anshun Xue Yuan - something, something, something Anshun Teacher's College?
ME: Dui, Anshun Xue Yuan - Right, Anshun Teacher's CollegeME: uhhhhhh, bu hui shuo zhongwen, wo shi waijo - uhhhhh, I don't speak Chinese, I am a foreign teacherMAN: Ni shi waijo ma? - You are a foreign teacher?ME: Dui - YesMAN: Duibuqi, xiexie - Sorry, thanksME: Xiexie, zaijian - Thanks, byeMAN: Zaijian - Bye
Granted, my first real telephone conversation was just saying that I don't speak Chinese, but I still feel proud of myself! :)
I have attempted to write this blog entry for nearly two months now. I think I am trying to put too many photos in it, and the internet keeps kicking me off. So, it remains to be seen whether this attempt will be successful!
In mid-December I had a chance to visit the Longgong Caves. They are a local "scenic spot". The government called the school to see if the foreign teachers would visit the caves as a way of promoting it. They are trying to increase their rating from a "4A" to a "5A" standing. And apparently foreigners are a good endorsement.
I was less than thrilled by the prospect. First of all, it would take up my entire Saturday. Second, we had to meet at 7:20am. Yuck! But I am so glad that I went - it was great!
Kelsey, Sara and I went, along with two other English department faculty (Chinese nationals).
We went to breakfast first - noodles. I am still not used to eating noodle soup for breakfast, but it was yummy.
There were celebrations at the caves (promotions for this "5A" rating thing): 
->local minority dances 
dragon dancing<-
We also went on a boat ride through the caves. I must admit, I was expecting something cold and cramped. But the caves were enormous and beautiful! The boat ride was the most fun.
We were served a pretty good lunch. Because we were "special guests" we had special food. I don't generally appreciate the special food. Special means turtle soup with whole turtles in it, chicken livers and chicken feet and heads. I would prefer poor people food any day! This was good, though.The day had some good examples of things that are typically Chinese:-We were given a survey to fill out about our experience. The Chinese teacher who was interpreting said "they ask that you would please mark 'very satisfied' for each category". How's that for ensuring that the responses are accurate!!-There was some mis-translation on the signs. Here is my favorite. Read the labels for the phone numbers!
:)
28 days and I'm off! I can't believe it's so soon. Most of the time I am really excited to live in China, teach, have my own apartment, use public transportation, etc. But every once in a while I get a little nervous. It's not a specific nervousness; I just get nervous about things in general. I guess specifically I am a little worried about getting all of my stuff into two suitcases/carrying those two suitcases through Chinese airports! The language thing is hard, but I'm getting better. Tones sort of make sense to me now. And I learned to count to 10, which means I also learned to count to 99. In Chinese a number like 34 is said "san shi si" or "three ten four". So now I can [theoretically] buy something from a market...I've sent out letters and received about a third of my money raised. I fashioned some "thank you" postcards yesterday. I need to finalize them, get them printed and start handing them out! I only have two more doctor's appointments in August. (I'm trying to figure out what still needs to be done...) I bought some books (a grade book and others) and only need to buy travel supplies (passport holder) and toiletries (they don't sell deodorant in China). Anyway, hopefully in a month I will have some interesting posts, that are about anything but deodorant! :)Liz
So learning Chinese (Zhōngwén) is pretty hard. I like to think that I have a flair for languages, but this is no walk in the park! Actually, I think that Chinese is rather logical. The sentence structure makes sense to me. For example:
*you add the word "ma" to the end of a sentence to change it from a statement to a question
**Nĭ māma máng (Your mother is busy) --> Nĭ māma máng ma? (Is your mother busy?)
* you add the word "men" to the end of a singular pronoun to make it plural, and the word "de" to the end of any pronoun to make it possessive
** Wŏ (I) --> Wŏde (my) -->Wŏmen (us/we) --> Wŏmende (our)
** Nĭ (you) --> Nĭde (your/yours) --> Nĭmen (you all) --> Nĭmende (all of yours)
** Tā (he/she/it) --> Tāde (his/hers/its) --> Tāmen (them/they) --> Tāmende (their/theirs)
So far I get Chinese grammar. But my spoken Chinese stinks! It's the tones that are killing me. There are four tones:
First tone - ā ē ī ō ū and it's high
Second tone - á é í ó ú and it's rising
Third tone - ă ĕ ĭ ŏ ŭ and it scoops (high, low, high)
Fourth tone - à è ì ò ù and it's falling
Neutral tone - a e i o u and it's neutral!
There's also a fifth vowel ü but my computer won't let me type it with a tone mark on top.
The thing about the tones is that it's very difficult to understand them from a book.
So I have a whole CD of pinyin practice. The pages look like this:
B
bā, bá, bă, bà
bō, bó, bŏ, bò
bī, bí, bĭ, bì
bū, bú, bŭ, bù
bāi, bái, băi, bài
bāo, báo, băo, bào
bān, bán, băn, bàn
bāng, báng, băng, bàng
I'm listening to this as I type and it's hilarious. The woman just says the syllables over and over. I wish I could describe what it sounds like. It's kind of like a song. In fact, one of the books I'm using has the tones represented as notes on a piano. I played them several times and really didn't get it.
So, as if this isn't confusing enough, there are also characters to learn. I have a book of the 1000 most common characters. If you can learn these you can read some Chinese. And if you learn just 2000 more you can read the newspaper! Crazy! The biggest problem for me is that they all start to look similar:
天 heaven, god (anthropomorphic deity)
大 big
太 extremely
夫 husband (big man)
夬 (I looked through my dictionary for ten minutes and heard the woman say "zā, zá, ză, zà, zhā, zhá, zhă, zhà" a million times and still can't find this character...)夭 gentle
See, the problem is that I pretty much think of all of these pictures as the same in my head ("the one with two feet and a line going across") but that doesn't really cut it. Honestly, all I can recognize right now are 女 (female) and 人 (person). If you put them together you get woman.
So, I have a lot to learn still. I will keep you updated on my progress.
I can say zàijiàn (goodbye).
Until next time,
Elizabeth
I'll hide the eggs. Each student will find one, and then they will have to find the person with the translation of their word. Then we'll write all the words on the board and they'll learn 25 new Easter vocabulary words!
4. Type the words into a computer document with both the pinyin and the characters for easy future reference. 
5. One by one, look up the pinyin in the index of the Chinese Character Book. 
6. Find the character 
7. If you're lucky, the character will have an example of the stroke order
Two hours later - I'm finally done!
