Oh My God, I Can Talk!

I seem to have forgotten to publish this entry.  I must have been interrupted while writing.  Anyway, here it is.

Time is really flying here. I don’t really feel like I’m making progress with my language studies. I guess, initially there’s just such a dramatic feeling of “oh my god I can talk!” or “I can understand!” But anyway, I’m aware there are many plateaus when you’re learning a language. Just need to keep studying and it will come.

Part of my problem is that I’ve started learning the characters, and it just comes much more slowly. Obviously, it all helps to reinforce meaning and sentence structure and grammar and everything, but not strictly helpful. Not as immediately helpful as being able to say “My phone number is…” (“我的电话号码是…”)

I ran into Erez, an Israeli student that was just starting studies when I visited Jeremy last year. Nice to see a familiar face. He is contemplating his next move — maybe staying here in Kunming, maybe leaving. Not surprisingly, he was accompanied by a gaggle of people. He’s a very social guy. His entourage included his brother, two Israeli students, and two Chinese women, one of whom he introduced as his girlfriend. Ha. Well, we exchanged numbers, so I’m sure I haven’t heard the last from him.