Slowly coming to the terms that I'll be leaving the country soon. There's just a few things that need to be done. I just got back from an overnight meeting in another city for a trip to Japan that immediately follows the China trip. HELLO JETLAG CITY. It's a 13 hour flight so that's what? 13 albums or 3 books or 100s of bad puns that Rebecca is gonna have to live thru. MUAHAHAHA. My bag is actually mostly packed! Most of the daily stuff I'll get in China!
I bought a book today that has pictures of Canada from Newfoundland to B.C. It should be pretty helpful to tell the students about Canada! I'm still pretty nervous about the language barrier but I've had a few chances to practice my Mandarin lately!
In 4 days I'll be on a plane and on a new adventure! Can it just be next week? Ahhh!
So naturally, since we're going to China I'm brushing up on my minimal 普通话 (putonghua). I'm in the unique posistion where I see a fair amount of Chinese students in a given day. All of which, upon hearing that I was going to China, were interested in helping me study. I've also downloaded the app WeChat which a lot of Chinese friends have to talk to each other. A lot of them told me I was the only Canadian they had on the app. Too funny! I also have a very extensive Mandarin Dictionary on my phone called Pleco. I've also added a Chinese keyboard to my phone so hopefully with all these resources I'll be a little further along then when I started. I usually just ask them about vocab or phrases that I think would be handy to know. Then I send them messages using what I've learned to make sure I'm applying it correctly! I have until April to practice so...
加油!!! 加油!!!
My resources:
http://www.wechat.com/en/
http://www.pleco.com/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.inputmethod.pinyin&hl=en
Until next time,
Jennifer
