On Learning Chinese

I've been asked on occasion how my Chinese is coming. Let me show you instead of tell you. These images are screenshots of my attempts to speak into Google translate to try to get the tones right as well as to have the Romanization to make practice easier on my brain (One of my lessons is only audio and I need visual help too). I have no idea what I was suppose to be saying, but clearly it wasn't any of these things!

The last one is hilarious because Wang Jian is our driver so this makes total sense, but that was NOT what I was practicing to say! I was trying to say something about some street in Beijing. (The lessons are often as confusing as the language!)

But I am trying. I work on it every day on a couple of different apps, with a teacher and with a book. I wish I could report more progress, but I can't..... I'm just slow. And old!

Comments

While We Are Waiting: Temples!

I love the temple. When I first learned of the possibility of us moving to China in December 2019, one of my first questions was "How can I leave the temple?" That question was answered in part during the closure of temples in 2020. However, when the joint venture was signed and Tom was officially offered the position in China in November 2020, I began fasting and praying that I would be able to attend the temple just once before we left. Our original flights were for July 7, 2021 and just a few weeks before that, our temple opened up and miraculously we were able to get 2 appointments for baptisms and 4 other appointments for Tom and I before our departure date. I can't express my deep gratitude for those 6 precious appointments. Then when we didn't obtain a visa in time for those flights and access to nearby temples was given, I took up a new hobby. Temple scheduling. The girls teased me it was a bit of an obsessed hobby; but since we will go ...

An Accomplishment!

The process: Cut the recipe in half so that the bread will fit in your teensy tinsy oven. Convert everything to metric--- ingredient amounts and water temperature. Get your purified water to the right temperature. Measure ingredients out. Mix it up. Humidity changes things.... Hope you did it right. Shape and let rise. Convert oven temperature to Celsius. My little oven heats up nicely, but you get to guess when it is preheated. Notice there are no smoke alarms in your kitchen. Hmm. Decrease the cook time and cross your fingers that is right. Add a cooking thermometer to the shopping list. Let it cool for a long time because you only have a small serrated knife for cutting it. Slice and eat. It probably could have tasted pretty awful and we would have thought that bit of home tasted very delightful! But it was quite good! Needs a little more salt, but that is an easy adjustment. And it could have been crustier, but we're at a point o...

Mid-Autumn Festival

We're not entirely sure how we got this little gig, but it was a fun one! I got the We-Chat contact of a Chinese person who was associated with a themed hotel that featured Chinese history. I planned on using it down the road for an educational field trip. But the person was quite persistent that we come soon. So I told him we'd come September 16th. Then he asked if we could come for the Mid-Autumn festival the weekend earlier. I suggested Friday the 9th (so we could be home for church). But he insisted on the 10th for the actual festival. We got permission to check out a half hour late so we could do our church meetings from the hotel. (although, they didn't know that's why we needed a later time!) We arrived at the hotel after lunch on the 10th and were greeted by several people. After we were checked in, the girls and I had to pick out traditional clothing to wear (Tom got out of it...) and they took us up to our rooms. The ...

This Great Work

Search This Blog