sinnamon's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chinese stalker In some weird "it's a small world after all" twist of fate, Bill managed to find a group of Chinese students (in China) who also play Final Fantasy 11. Of course, once they discovered that I spoke (a little) Chinese, they pounced. But I was glad for the opportunity to converse, even though it was all in pinyin. In typical Chinese living in China fashion, they asked me to help them with their English. I, of course, said I would, but what they mainly wanted was for me to translate pieces of the game for them that they didn't understand. We exchanged emails. Their first email, written all in characters, took me about 1 hour to translate (very badly of course through the help of babelfish and my trusty dictionaries). But even more difficult was trying to email them answers in my stunted Chinese, made even more difficult with my lack of knowledge in the Windows XP Chinese language support. Once I figured out how to actually write the characters, it got a little easier, but I still feel as though my horrible grammar and limited vocabulary will just make them more confused instead of helping! But it was still interesting to try and write an email completely in Chinese, and to make new friends of course. I really miss China sometimes, and I definitely miss speaking Chinese on a daily basis. I always feel like it is slipping away. My listening comprehension is just terrible now. I need to be exposed to it more. Maybe I just need to be aggressive, like the Chinese I met in China, and just start stalking Chinese people to practice my Chinese on :D Oh wouldn't that be fun :) 12:45 AM - 043004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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