Three Little WHAT? （三只小猪）

A lot more people in my landscape these days, so I haven’t been spending as much time blogging. Clearly.

My roommate is gone to Hong Kong for a few days. Her older sister is meeting her there — flying from South Korea. She was really excited before she left. I have to admit it’s nice to have “a room of one’s own.” But it’s really not very quiet around here.  Another woman just moved in next door. She’s from Thailand, just a year younger than me, and seems super cool. She speaks enough English to understand my “chinlish” which is strange. When I hesitate and speak a little English she seems to pick it up sometimes. Interesting. I gave her the tour of our tiny home. heh. And, of course, I gave her my phone number and told her to make sure she asks me if she needed to know anything about anything. I suspect she’s able to navigate pretty well on her own, but it’s so fun to have a new member to the little foreigner community in the dorm. Her nickname is Wan — means “sweet” in Thai.

Still feeling like I’m not retaining anything from my studying.  But Mari is very encouraging and complements my speaking.  I definitely need to arrange a tutor, because my language exchange efforts so far have not been very successful.  It’s fun to meet people, but my Chinese is not at a high enough level for simple conversation.  So, we come up with these little pseudo-lessons, but it gets a little crazy.  Last night I spent an hour discussing the story the Three Little Pigs (San1 Zhi1 Xiao3 Zhu1).  That’s stupid.  I mean, it’s tricky business.

Today I met with a young high school student about tutoring — tutoring him in English.  Very promising.  He’s very talented and enthusiastic.  I met with him at a cafe, and his parents accompanied him, but sat one table over.  Mostly we talked, but his mother asked a few questions (her son interpreted for her).  Anyway, I really look forward to working with him.  I don’t adjust my speech much around him.  Most of the time I really have to think about how I’m saying everything with my students.  And I have to re-word and talk more slowly.  But we really had a very relaxed chat.  Apparently he really likes Lord of the Rings, so we’ll be discussing the movie as our first class topic.  A little challenging, but I’m ready to give it a try.  I think I should prepare a back-up plan though.  So, we arranged to do two 1-hour lessons per week.  This is the first student that wants to set a schedule!  Excellent.

I’ve actually been spending a lot of time thinking about a web design project that a friend from back home approached me about.  It’s kind of a relief to be doing that web work.  I haven’t clinched the deal yet, but I spent some time putting together a mock-up.  Studying a language is an unending process, but web design has a finished product.  Also, I just know my way around it, so I can get creative. Yay!

World Cup finals tonight at 2:00 a.m. here.  Whoah.  I don’t know if I can stay up.  Yawning already.