I have devoloped an interesting hobby in the past months. That of buying pens. I don't know why it is, but I've become addicted and actually end up buying one or two every week. The above picture is the pens that I carry around with me on a regular basis. I have three times that many in my room. Ginger tends to buy pens when she's angry: but I just buy pens and I'm walking past a stationary store and don't know what to with the change in my pocket.

Yesterday all my kids had mid-terms. For the first class I actually did teah a little bit: I read off the list of spelling words as part of the test and then even worked with them on translating a short reading portion. It's really cool that my Chinese has gotten to the point that I can read something in English, have the kids translate it, and catch mistakes they made.

But then the other five classes of the day I did nothing at all. Kiwi had tried to ask if I could just go home since I wouldn't be teaching any, but the school insisted that since I was getting paid I had to be in the class room the whole time! So in the back of the class room I sat, writing Chinese character for most of the morning and afternoon. I learned how to write ?, ?, ?, ?, and ?. I now know enough characters to write a few basic coversations completely in Chinese! Cool! But I have actually decided not to focus quite so much on characters as I have been: I think I really need to work on improving my spoken vocab. I know a lot of sentance patterns, but I often find myself in the middle of using them and I come to a dead end, because I don't know the needed vocab. to use that sentance pattern.

But dude, let me tell you, if you ever feel bad about your Chinese, you should just go to Sanwhy! You see, of the foriegners here in GingChun, most of us speak some Chinese. Everybody on the team can speak some and is working very hard on learning. Andrew and Ginger can both read menu's completely in Chinese and Meagan and Lucas are close behind them. Rebekah has awesome conversation skills. And, if I may say so myself, I can do fairly decent in getting my point across as well. Gabe (a cram school teacher) has really awesome Chinese as well and speaks some Taiwanese as well. So the only forgieners in GingChun who don't speak Chinese are the two college teachers. So the GingChun Chinese level is pretty good.

Sanwhy, on the other hand, is an entirely different mattter altogether! The Chinese level in Sanwhy is somewhere between pathetic and non-existant. The Canadian lady who teaches at the Jr. high there and her family don't speak Chinese. The South African mine-sweeping dude doesn't speak Chinese.

So yesterday on my lunch break I decide to go shopping. I walk into a tourist type shop and I'm just looking around. The owner is hovering behind me, acting kinda nervous, obviously trying to figure out how to communicate with me. Then I turn to her and ask "what type of thing is this?" A very simple, basic sentance. She about goes nuts. "WOW! Your Chinese is so good! Your accent is so good! You don't speak in a flat tone of voice! Wow! Amazing! Super!" I actually carried on a pretty long coversation with her: probably because it was just so good for my ego!

Then I go into another shop and (you guessed it!) buy a pen. I pick up a pen and say another very simple, easy sentance: "How much is this?" The lady in this store about flips out too. It was really a big ego boost: I walked back to the school totally ready to sit through to more clsses doing nothing but study my Chinese! Wee!

Guys, I feel like I'm living a dream. It's not perfect (dude, I wish I was back in Jr. high!) but it's amazingly awesome. I'm always busy, I'm learning, I'm teaching (something I've enjoyed) I have lots of time to hang out with my friends, I'm seeing lots of them starting to ask questions about Christ...guys, this is so the life.

Ok, I've got to go now. The family is going to be calling soon. Oh, btw, I'm judging an English singing compitition up at the high school later today: let's hope that goes well. Bye, love you guys!


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