Chinese Lessons

Chopsticks! (Spoons with Chinese silverware)

Hanging out at Papa John's. Lily is in the red.

Well, our group finally started taking Chinese lessons this week. I am not sure if I have mentioned it before or not, but Cory (the returning teacher of our group) is married to Lara, a Chinese girl. We've gotten to know her pretty well, and she will be tutoring us once or twice a week in Chinese. So far, we've had three lessons. I don't know too many new words yet, but I am at least learning how to pronounce things after I've seen them in pin yin. The language is so difficult, but it doesn't seem as impossible as it did a week ago!

Yesterday, a big group had a 20th birthday party for our Chinese friend, Lily. Lily went with us on our vacation to Yangshuo. Lily has been one of the local Chinese that has befriended the Zhong Relations group members over the years here. It was fun hanging out with everyone at Papa John's (for some pepperoni pizza!) and then heading back to Taylor's apartment to play games. We played kick the can and chopsticks (Spoons, just with chopsticks). Everyone had a great time, especially Lily. I was glad we could do something to show her how much we appreciate her.

Last week, I had an interesting conversation with a guy at Mr. Mai's. His English name is Thomas. I've talked with him a few times over the last few weeks. I noticed him by himself a lot, so I wanted to go talk with him. It turns out, he is a very smart guy who wants to get his master's in Linguistics in America.

This night, we started talking about politics which led to a discussion on religion. According to him, "All truth is relative. I believe in truth with a lower case t, but not a capital T." We had a very interesting debate on that, the reliability of the Word, and other topics. It was very fun and frustrating at the same time. I can tell he's very smart, but he thinks he has it all figured out. He said the burden of proof is on believers. I said that's fine as long as he thinks with an open mind. Be thinking of him as I hope to have more conversations with him over the next few months.

Everything is still going well here. I finished up tutoring Xiong Shi-Tong today. I think he is much more confident with his English and interview skills than he was two weeks ago. His interview with Cambridge is on Thursday. I'm hoping to hear from him soon after about how it went.