ni hao.

I'm super confused right now because I am watching Eyes Wide Shut (a movie I watched obsessively for awhile in my life) in Chinese. It is an even stranger movie when it is in a language that you are familiar with but do not understand.

Learning Chinese. 

I take the free teacher's class on Thursdays after school. It is taught by one of the assistant Chinese teacher's at my school. She thinks we are foolish, has pretty low expectations for us and just comes to collect the extra pay. It's actually pretty great because Chinese is hard. Like, really hard. 

Why is it hard?
There are 4 tones that all make a single word mean different things (one word has four meanings depending on how you say it). Those tones aren't natural speaking patterns in English. You use different mouth muscles and hold your breath longer while saying words. I know that this is going to shock you, as it did me, but Chinese and English are NOTHING alike.

I sit in taxi cabs and can't have small chat with my drivers. Sure I can tell them straight, right, left, stop, there, u-turn, hello, thank you and bye (no more and no less) but I can't have any sort of back and forth banter with them. It makes me incredibly sad and disconnected from the place I live. I love talking to random people. It's one of my defining characteristics. 

Should I start studying Chinese more seriously? Yes. Will I? Maybe but probably not. My friend Beth summed it up well today. She said "I don't think anyone should have to worry about making any other life changes when they've just done this. If you've always wanted to start exercising, now is not the time to try to do it." It's perfectly true of the experience for me- it's tough enough to have your entire world and culture change, and if that's as much change that you can take for awhile, then just let it be. Immerse yourself as much as you can, but remember to practice compassion for yourself and keep it in perspective that you already did a cool thing by moving in the first place.