I think learning any language is hard, so far it all seems to be logical too, so I think it'll get harder yet. But today I wasn't feeling very well and I felt extra out-of-it in class, especially when the second teacher started talking to the students in Chinese about slightly off text book topics, then I'd space out for a second, then lose track of the conversation. Of course they'd notice and ask me if I understood, then laugh at me. So right before I left for home I set fire to the storage supply closet near the bathroom and burned the place down. Just kidding. The last 1 hour period I started to feel better and pop off answers to questions before anyone else could (It's all a competition you know.) I seem to find sentence structure easy to understand in concept, but in practice when I hear people speaking quickly I get lost easier than most of my class-mates. When I hear a word I don't understand I tend to freeze and stop listening to the rest of the sentence context. But this is pretty much the same as I am in English, so I foresee myself continuing to progress as planned despite the pain of learning.

I've gone to the next level in my Stinky Tofu obsession. I'm doubling up. Why have one order (bag) of Stinky Tofu when you can have two? I also felt kinda sneaky ordering two because the guy put it into two bags and added two sets of chop sticks. If I spoke better Chinese I could have told him to put it all in one bag, but I didn't want to risk any confusion in the delicate, crucial, and time sensitive process of ordering and acquiring Stinky Tofu. I can only wait so long. Yes it may seem excessive but one bag of Tofu is hardly a whole meal, and I was hungry. Also I'd like to point out that my class-mates have picked up on my Stinky Tofu problem and regularly work it into our dialogs: "Marc how far is your house from a stinky tofu shop?" "Marc, do you feel sick because you haven't had sticky tofu in two days?" "Marc where do you buy stinky tofu?" It's easy to say in Chinese too, and I like talking about it. As you can tell.

Something I just realized is that I'm starting to forget my name. Not really forget, but nobody calls me "Marc" here, I'm "Du Dixiong" to the brothers, and "Ma Ke" to my class mates, which sounds similar but not really. If someone called me "Marc" here I'd wonder why they were calling me that. It's a weird thing to miss your own name. I guess it's all part of the fast lane stinky tofu life style I'm leading over here. (edit 303) Permalink