Dragon Fruit and learning Chinese

One of the joys in life awaiting us in China was the discovery of new fruits. Most significantly, the dragon fruit. 火龙果 (huo long guo, or "fire dragon fruit" in Chinese) is kind of like a kiwi on the inside, but infinitely more impressive on the outside..the skin peels off whole and makes a nice shell to display a fruit salad to impress your friends. The taste is very mild and juicy. We have now almost completely abandoned the supermarket for fruits and vegetables unless pressed for time and now proceed down an alley off the main street outside the gate to our favorite fruit and vegetable vendors. 6 oranges, a star fruit and a dragon fruit came to 11 yuan (about 14 cents) this afternoon. The vegetables are even cheaper...I can buy as many green vegetables as I can carry for about 15 yuan. The quality is simply amazing -- the freshest I have ever encountered, and even cleaner than the supermarket, although we still wash them all quite thoroughly. This alley was a place we were afraid to enter, let alone shop in a month ago...the butcher has the first 2 stalls, and you need some time getting used to the up close and personal relationship that the Chinese shopper has with meat before venturing past. Still haven't bought anything from him, preferring the impersonal wrapped meat packages in the store, where if the slaughtering conditions are unsanitary, at least I don't have to watch and I'll just cook it well.

So you may have noticed I figured out I can cut and paste Chinese characters into the blog...let me know if they are readable or not. Yesterday and today I spent more significant time pursuing my Chinese study and have slowly been coming to some important conclusions 1) that I should not be wasting my time reading novels in the afternoon during Sophia's nap 2) that time is going by and this is my golden opportunity to speak and learn Chinese and its up to me to seize it 3) that while it is a difficult language to speak and read and write -- it is not impossible and we have made excellent progress so far, but we need to increase the intensity if we want to get past one word statements and start understanding what's going on. 4) learning characters is not the enemy...even though we westerners are scared of them -- it can be fun and rewarding!

This is what we are doing to learn Chinese -- we have a tutor who works with us 1 hour twice a week and we are attending a 2 hour class on Sundays. We now have 2 textbooks, one for each teacher. I am also going to spend more time on the Rosetta stone program we bought...now that I have some vocabulary it is more rewarding! Most importantly for me -- trying to put myself in situations where I hear Chinese in conversation, and especially where I am expected to respond. Whether its at the market a restaurant, at Helen's school or at my tai chi practice, I am making a little progress in comprehension.

The latest Tai chi news is that I was dragged by two of the ladies to a free workshop on the 24 basic positions (dragged because I had only a vague notion of what they were trying to tell me). I think for the next seven days --but each day I just ask one of them "mingtian ma?" (tomorrow?) so I know when to come-- I am spending an hour in a large group receiving more in depth instruction for beginners. Some of the folks I have been practicing with are also attending. The lesson in in Chinese of course, but its pretty visual, and I have the advantage of daily repetition over the past 2 months already, so I am really getting a lot out of it ...I had missed a lot of the finer points.

Some commenters asked about Malinda...she is much better and is now staying with her parents for a few weeks (see her mother's comment from a few days ago). Thank you for all the responses about my mom -- we are waiting to find out when her surgery will be, but probably not for 2 weeks or so. Its hard to wait, but keeping busy helps.