Yesterday was a pretty quiet day. I washed the sheets on our bed. I put them out to dry and a little later I checked on them and one was touching the ground. So I had to wash it again. Frustrating!
I had to do some grocery shopping (2 stores to find 10 items, and still didn't find everything I needed!) I went to Metro, which is like a Costco, but it doesn't have as many bulk items. I was looking for some goodie bag items for Daniel's Birthday party on Saturday. Found bags with 3 single serving bags of M&M's in them. But I wasn't able to find much else. So I had to go to Carrefour and buy the bulk candy - which worked out because I only have 5 boys going to be here and I could just buy 5 items of each candy.
After shopping I went to tea at a friend's apartment. On the first day of school I met a woman, Lily, at the bus stop. Her daughter is in 9th grade at SAS. She is Chinese, but lived in Toronto for 3 years, so she can speak English fairly well. We have talked off and on over the past 2 months. Monday she invited me to come over for tea, so we planned for Wednesday at 1pm.
I arrived at 1pm and she had everything laid out very nicely and typical Chinese style. The proper way to make Chinese tea is to have the actual leaves in a tea pot. There is another pot for hot water. Lily had a 5 gallon water bottle hooked to the hot water tea pot.To make the tea hot water is added to the tea leaves then the water is dumped out. This is to wash the tea leaves. Hot water is poured over the tea cups as well. There is a wooden tray that has slots so the water can drain off. After the cleaning process, fresh water is added to the leaves again. Then you can drink the tea. The cups are very small - almost doll size. It only holds a couple of sips so that you are always getting fresh tea.
While we had tea we talked about her stay in Toronto, our move to China, our children. Her and her daughter moved to Shanghai 6 months ago from Hong Kong. Her son is in the States in college and her husband is living in their hometown about 2 1/2 hours from here. I am finding this to be very common here, husband lives one place for work and wife lives another for the benefit of the children's education.
I mentioned to her that I am looking to start Chinese lessons as soon as I research schools. She told me that she used to be a kindergarten teacher in China and she will teach me Chinese for free. So she started teaching me the basics (what they teach in kindergarten. FYI - I think I need to start younger!!!)
Chinese is a very tonal language. The letter A can is used 4 different ways by changing the tone. In the English vowels sound changes. In Chinese the vowel sound stays the same you just keep the sound the same pitch, raise the pitch - meaning you start at one sound then raise the pitch, lower the pitch - the opposite you start high and lower the pitch, the last one is you lower then raise the pitch. Sounds easy - no! We are used to using tones to make questions, denote happiness, etc. Here it changes the meaning entirely. A word can be said 4 different ways (tones) and mean 4 different things. So we practiced the tones of A, E and O. It was really hard! The she taught me a couple of sentences. "Drink Tea" - "He cha" (pronounced Hu cha). I still have not mastered "How much?" "duo shoa qian" (pronounced dow shou chin - sort of) a useful phrase but hard to pronounce. That is my homework for the week - master this sentence! We plan on getting together every week at least once to practice Chinese. Maybe by Christmas I can speak 4-5 sentences!!!
Daniel is also helping me. I have been practicing the numbers this week. See if you can say them! (I do not know how to write them in Peng You (English writing of Chinese words) so I will write them as they are pronounced.
1- E (long E),
2 - R
3 - sun
4 - su (not sure how to write this u sound, maybe like the u in under, but the u sound is quick)
5 - wa (very short a sound - not long a, but the a stops quick)
6 - Leo
7 - chee
8 - ba
9 - jow (as in ow that hurts)
10 - she
OK practice those, there will be a quiz later!!!
When I was walking home from tea, I looked up to my balcony and could see that the sheet I had washed twice was dragging on the ground again. I wanted to scream. It is 3:30 and I needed to wash them again and hope that they would dry in time for bed. Three times I washed those sheets. This time before I hung them out I took out the mop and made sure the floor was extra clean, just in case. Managed to dry them in time for bed. The weather was absolutely beautiful, so one plus to the washing the sheets today!
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