learning 中文

i'll be the first to admit that i haven't hit the books much at all as far as "learning chinese" :( but i'm thankful that i've still had PLENTY of opportunities to practice speaking and listening... thus i'm still learning it but not "officially" haha (i'm a terrible student- it's something that i'm trying to work on!)

2 years ago... i could only say 你好 (ni hao- hello)，我听不懂 (wo ting bu dong- i hear but don't understand)，谢谢 (xie xie- thank you), 一二三。。。(1-10)

BUT by his grace and help i've now been able to have conversations of all kinds in Chinese! (of course it's not perfect but they usually understand what i'm trying to say and i can usually guess what they're saying- context is my friend! haha..)

some PRO's of my chinese learning thus far include the abilities to: shop/bargain, make new friends, order food, greet/small talk, ask for directions/questions, introduce myself, sing cool chinese songs, say a simple blessing over the food, recognize characters all around me, understand what people are saying, AND even have conversations about belief and the Father!!

some CON's of learning chinese: tones are a killer, certain sounds are near impossible for the human american tongue haha, dialects and accents make chinese 10x's more confusing, all my 3+ years of spanish is out the window and now replaced, and characters are pretty... but also pretty hard to write/recognize sometimes!

there's a student named Mikey (aka Little fish like his chinese name) that comes into our office a lot because he loves the foreign teachers- especially Kelsey :) and he has special needs but is so sweet and always brings joy to us. today laura and i were waiting to get picked up and Mikey was hanging out in the office- we started having a conversation in Chinese (because he doesn't know a lot of english) and somehow ended up sharing about what we believe and who we love... we got to share with him that the Father loves him and made him special... he in return told us that the Father loves us and made us too :) he told me that i was very kindly and i told him that it's because J lives in my heart- he got excited and wrote down what i said. hehe please think of Mikey as we will be leaving soon and we all want him to know truth and where our joy and kindness comes from!!

p.s. i don't know what got into me with all the "wordy" blogs... very unlike me! haha but you might see a lot of blogs popping up soon because my goal before i leave in 2 weeks is 6 more blogs to make it a total of 100 for the 2 years in china :)