Speaking Chinese 谈话中文

It's obviously tough sometimes getting around China without speaking the language.  It also quite amazing all of the things you can communicate to people without saying words -- a lesson we learned very quickly.

We are slowly making progress learning the language.  The most progress we made was with our Chinese teacher, Fennefer 方园.  Fennefer clearly isn't a Chinese name, but you may be surprised that it is her English name.  I think there's a story there, but it obviously wasn't that interesting because it didn't stick with me.  Fennefer was recommended to us through the company paid language training company.  She would come to our house once per week beginning in Feb.  She worked with Ema and Chessie for one hour and then worked with me for two hours.  (Bella wasn't interested.)



Lessons continued through June.  Fennefer is a student at Wuhan University.  She went home to Beijing during the summer, so we decided to just take a two month break instead of finding a new teacher.  She came back to Wuhan, and we restarted lessons in late Sep.  Unfortunately after just a couple of weeks, she said she was returning to Beijing for the rest of the semester.  It was already Oct by then, and the company paid benefit expires at the end of the year.  We decided just to let it go.  We liked Fennefer, but overall is wasn't a great experience.

The person we need to communicate with the most is Mr. Huang, our driver.  When we arrived, I quickly learned out to send text message to him in Chinese.  This was perfect because I could take my time to figure out what I needed to say, and with an English-Chinese iPhone app I could be accurate.  I mostly just needed to send a few characters that told him where we needed to go and what time.  Of course, that was all under the assumption that he needed to pick us up from our house.  After awhile I was able to communicate more complicated items.  For example, Chessie walked around the local area with the kids one day this summer.  It was so hot they decided they wanted a ride back home.  Since Mr. Huang didn't know that they had gone out, I had to communicate to him where they were and what he needed to do.  Everything worked out fine.

Mr. Huang is who I learn the most from now.  I try and talk with him as much as I can in the car.  Words I learn from him seem to stick in my mind better than they did learning with Fennefer.

> Clayton