Why I like Chinese

This is my character practice book, where I write the characters I am learning over and over again..

This is our Chinese textbook.. I am proud to say that Michael and I have finished this book just this week. In fact this morning we have a "test" from our tutor. There are about 175 characters in this book, Unfortunately while they all look familiar now, there are many I can't remember consistently. The more complicated ones are made up of smaller pieces, called radicals. The same radicals appear in numerous characters, and these are the ones I tend to get confused by. But one thing is interesting is that certain radicals have a meaning which helps you to figure out what the character is about. An example is Lao shi 老师. The Lao character has a cross sitting on a horizontal line with a diagonal line through it on top. That radical means respect, and the character Lao means elder..Lao shi is teacher (see the relationship?) Its fun to try and find the connections this way, although some characters are used just for sound and the game doesn't work.
I also like learning written Chinese to reinforce the oral language. There are just too few sounds in Chinese for all the words. Even if I could keep all the tones straight, which I do not much of the time, there are still a lot of duplicates, where you need the character or the context to know which one it is. Somehow knowing how it is written is a help with keeping them straight in my head.
I have a Chinese name 林 子安 ... Lin Zi An ...we worked on it with our teacher. Lin is the Chinese word for "forest" , and is also a common surname in China, so that seemed easy. An is phonetic for Ann, but also means peaceful/contented and Zi is just a sound the teacher threw in there to make it sound better. 林 峰 Lin Feng is Michael's name...Lin for Forest and Feng means mountain summit, the teacher thought it was a good choice for Michael's lofty thoughts, I guess. I have been using Ann Forest in China to simplify things, but it turns out that in China, women do not take their husband's name, so our teacher thought it sounds like we are brother and sister. You just can't win.
I do feel that I am at a plateau with speaking Chinese. I know enough words, no doubt mispronounced badly, to survive..find a bathroom, order dinner, ask what things cost...but not enough to ask interesting questions, nor understand complicated ideas at all..Plus I talk like a 2 year old most of the time, with the words in the wrong order, etc. Still I amuse the Chinese people around me with my efforts, which counts for something. But I am not sure how much progress I can make in the next few months. At least with the writing I feel the progress, as I am slowly able to read some signs, recognize other characters as I am riding the bus, etc.
So although I have not been posting, I have been busy. I have also been corresponding with some folks by email, and my mother in law got Skype, so my correspondence time has been busy. Tomorrow we leave for a week in Yunnan (check the map below), our big vacation. The campus is emptying out, even the convenience stores are closed, so it will be good to get away. Of course taking three children to a new place is not exactly relaxing, but it will be stimulating, I hope. Yunnan is a place famous for its natural wonders and colorful ethnic minority culture. We will go to two cities...Kunming, the capital, and Lijiang, as small city up in the mountains, closer to the Myanmar border. If you don't know where or what Myanmar is, think Burma. I am hoping to blog from there, as Michael is bringing the computer and the hotels have promised DSL, but we'll see. While fairly remote, Lijiang is a haven for Western backpackers and trekkers, so we are optimistic. We will return to Xiamen Feb 2nd, ahead of the Chinese New Near traveling chaos.