Learning Chinese & Teachers As Friends

Well, my Chinese is slowly getting better. I was able to order coffee and green tea at Starbucks last weekend (yeah, I know, the irony). However, when the clerk started asking me details like how large and how much sugar I was back to pointing or replying in Chinglish. One problem with speaking Chinese is that people assume that you speak it very well. Or, perhaps, my pronunciation is very good but I doubt it. I have also noticed that when I try to speak Chinese slowly and carefully people get confused, but when I speak normally, and without much thought of the tones, people understand me. For me, the tones and logographic characters (versus a phonetic alphabet) are the most difficult part of Chinese. What I am learning, Bopomofo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo, is a phonetic system for writing Chinese but it is only used in Taiwan and it is only used for teaching children Mandarin in Taiwan. You won't see signs written in Bopomofo. Most people start with Pinyin as it is more widely used, but Bopomofo uses "Chinese" looking letters to represent each phoneme. It is my hope that my brain will have an easier time recognizing Chinese characters by learning Bopomofo instead of Pinyin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin
The problem with Pinyin is that it is not standardized. So, Xitun Road may also be spelled Situn Road, for example. It was all quite confusing when I first came to Taiwan, but I'm starting to get the hang of it.

If you want to learn Bopomofo look at this. It's a very cute You-Tube video my teacher sent to me.

I sit with some teachers at lunch. Sometimes, I am able to hear words I know. I showed them some of my homework and handouts for my class. They were very impressed with the hand-outs that my tutor makes. One teacher said, "Your teacher is very good. Don't let her go." Way to go Anshing! She IS a very good teacher. Wendy (Anshing) is my friend. We were friends before she became my Chinese tutor. Like so many friends today we are 'talk' on Facebook. Sometimes, I am afraid to go on Facebook because I'm afraid she will be online. She'll ask me, "Have you done your homework?" or "Have you been studying Chinese?" She doesn't say, "Hello, how are you?" she goes straight to Chinese. And, she usually asks me in Romanized Chinese too. So, "Hello, how are you?" becomes "Ni hao, ni hao ma?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Mandarin_Chinese

English to Chinese and Chinese to English...it all gets very confusing. However, in general, Chinese seems to be very logical. For example, for days of the week you say, day-one (Monday), day-two (Tuesday), day-three (Wednesday)...or shing-chee e, shing-chee er, shing-chee san. The word for 'things' is dongshi which translates as 'east to west' or everything-under-the-sun. A computer is an 'electric brain'.

Desyueshan National Forest Recreation Area

It's was a three day weekend. Monday was Peace Day in Taiwan. Peace Day, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/228_Incident,  recognizes the 228 Incident. I won't get into the history of the holiday, but it does have political ramifications to this day.

I went hiking for a day in Desyueshan National Forest http://www.taiwan-travel-experience.com/dasyueshan.html. The trail was not very long, but it was quite rugged and steep. It's also great to get away from the city noise and pollution. The national park is about a two hour drive from Taichung. Since it was a holiday weekend there were many people on the trail. I was very surprised to see the very young and the very old on this trail. When you look at my pictures you will understand. We hiked the Yuanzueishan-Shaolaishan trail. Yuanzueishan Mountain (Eagle Mountain) is pictured below. The trial follows the steep ridge of the mountain and some sections are 'technical' class 5 climbing. Lots of fun for a monkey boy like me.


Yuanzueishan Mountain (Eagle Mountain) is about 2300 (7,545 feet) meters high. Taiwan has the highest number and density of high mountains in the world.

Yeah, this is as steep as it looks.

Some hikers on the ridge of the mountain.

In The Newspaper

There was a calligraphy class at Chun-An Elementary school a few months ago. A picture of me ended up in the local newspaper. One of my students at Hui-Lai Elementary school cut out the article and made a card for me.

 This is the front of the car.

 This is the back of the card.