So something I (Matt) had to do to get my student VISA here is that I had to have a medical exam. It was, like most things here, not without some surprise. At one point they had me lay on a table and they gave me an ultrasound test on my kidney's. After the nurse put the gel on my side and begun examining me, in Chinese I asked, "Boy or Girl?". She thought it was funny and I was proud of myself for being able to tell a joke in Chinese.
I (Matt) also got a gym membership here! It's super cheap and I'm feeling motivated by my wife's awesomeness and wanting to be alive for a while, decided it's time to start getting in shape. I give it a month.... just kidding, but seriously I hope it will last.
Lastly, in class today we started our first Lesson! For the past week and a half we've only been working on tones and pronunciation. It is important to make sure your tones are correct, because you could be saying the wrong word if your tones aren't correct. An example of this is the word Shi (pronounced, sure) it can mean 10 in one tone and in another it can mean yes. This can confuse people if you’re counting, 6-7-8-9-YES! Pronunciation is also important, for example, the word Xia (pronounced, she-awe) means Shrimp, but the word Sha (pronounced, shawe) means to kill. This obviously can spell disaster in a restaurant, I want to kill... I mean, I want shrimp. Our first lesson today was on greetings, it was a lot of fun and now we will get to add some words to our survival Chinglish. Check out the mountain pictures soon, I'm having issues uploading them right now.
Wo yao (I want) Sha, I mean Xia,
the peterson's
