200!
The teaching job is going smoothly and, despite my frequent dips, I enjoy my work and it gives me a lot of spare time during which I usually feed my hungry Chinese craving with flash cards. I don’t do them myself, but I have my colleague write the characters, that way it goes faster and looks better.
I’ve started enumerating them and today I reached my 200th! This is supposed to equal above 50% understanding at reading Chinese.
The other day I made a friend when I was sitting, outside of my uncle’s nuddle bar, waiting, for Dervla. The man, whose name is still unpronounceable, passed me on the street, and like most of them do, giggled and dropped his line, “Hello”. The spontaneous chat caught on in chinese because it became clear quite early that his English vocabulary didn’t go further than “Hello”.
The sensation that surrounds you after having made a friend, exchanging phone numbers and dedicating a couple a minutes to murmuring, completely in Chinese is fantastically satisfactory.
My Chinese friend called me the other day and introduced me to his wife and 9-year-old son. We strolled around in the park for 1 hour and this is so far definitely the most authentic Chinese moment, since not a single English word was uttered.
We left each other that very same evening, saying that we were going to do this again but in a KTV environment (karaoke), for that is the common forum for the Chinese locals.
By the way, I apologize for suddenly swapping languages, but this is written from the schools computer and it is a lot more comfortable like this. Swedish is however back, soon enough!
Almost the complete TTC group in Shenyang - scattered all over the city.
Starting from the top left:
Andre, the Norwegian.
Jan, the German.
Moi
Christina,
Lisann, both from Denmark. They also live together and we don't see each other that much.
Bottom left:
David and Hayley, the couple from down under, with whom I share staircase and school.
Dervla, my Irish friend, and probably my best.
Jimena, from Mallorca. She and Jan form the second couple. Living quite remote and dependent on each other the rest of us don’t see much of them.
Hej ! kul att se hela gruppen, och höra att du är så duktig i Kinesiska och skaffar dig vänner överallt, inte förvånad. Stolt Yes :)
