As the common English saying goes, “Practice makes perfect”. When learning a new language, practicing your new found language will allow you to learn at a faster rate, while retaining things that you’ve already learned. For me, practicing is extremely important. Since I have a poor memory, I have to use and hear/see words over and over until I finally get it.

在英语我们说”practice makes perfect”.那个意思是如果你想学习一个新的东西，你应该练习很多。你学习一个你的外语时候练习是一个非常好的方法。我学习汉语的时候，我记得很慢，妄了快。所以我也应该练习很多！

Fortunately, there are a TON of language exchange websites out there. I’d thought I would take a moment and review some of the larger ones.

在上网友很多的语言换的网页你可以用练习你的外语。

《请用下面的按钮继续读》

I’m so sorry for the lack of updates!

There really hasn’t been a lot going on. Everyday I go to school, come home, study, work, rinse, and repeat.

School is a bit frustrating right now. We are moving sooooo fast. It seems like I’m forgetting faster than I am learning. But, so is life. My language learning goes up and down and right now it is down

On the weekends sometimes I visit a place in China, sometimes just stay home and study. So far I have been to the Forbidden City, The Great Wall, Heavenly Palace, Tian’anmen, and a mountain in Beijing. I have a bunch of pictures, hopefully I’ll find the time to upload them

This week a friend and I are going to the Beijing Zoo.

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I’ll really try to put up pictures from that and from trips from now on

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The past couple of weeks I’ve been kind of discouraged as my Chinese has been progressing much slower than I’d like. However, a friend reminded me that a language is not learned by mere smarts and pouring over flashcards. Although that is important, an essential part of the language learning process is practicing. I think I’ve been spending to much time in my books and with my flashcards and not enough time actually putting it to use. The way my mind works, I need thinks to “make sense”, I need to make connections and associations in order to remember things. I have a really hard time memorizing a seemingly random collection of data. So, I’ve been spending a lot more time over the last couple of days practicing and I feel a lot better. I’m starting to make connections between the words and they are starting to make sense instead of learning them in isolation.

Today, I ate my lunch with the Chinese teachers and practiced my Chinese with them. In addition, I had tea with Aunt and also had some good conversation. During meals, I’ve been really trying to use new vocabulary so that I can remember what I’ve learned. In addition, I’m attempting to translate this post into Chinese. The translation is quite bad, but at least it gives me some practice

On the way home from school yesterday, biking was really difficult. I’ve been biking quite slowly due to my leg injury, but I was trying to bike at a normal pace yesterday. I was quite puzzled as it felt like I was dragging a boat anchor or something. When I got back I checked the bike and my back tire was almost completely out of air. I pumped it up and biking was much easier today, lol.

The student - teacher ratio at school is really low, which allows for a lot of practice. In my class there are two students (it used to have five, but one student moved up a class, one student moved down a class, and one student went home to the US for a couple of months). We have a teacher for the spoken Chinese and a teacher for the written Chinese. In addition, twice a week, I have afternoon classes with a third teacher where I am the only student. This has given me a lot of chances to practice and it allows the teachers to really gage where the students are.

I asked Aunt and tomorrow she’ll be helping me cook a Chinese dish for dinner

Well, that about wraps up this post. Now it’s time to try translating it!

生星期我一点摶因为我中文的学习很慢。我的朋友告诉我《你应该说和写很多》。这个星期我所以说和写中文了很多。这个星期我的学习很快。我很高兴！

今天我和两个中文老师一起吃午饭。我给他们中文的说。我回家时候我和阿姨说了中文。设么时候我和阿姨吃晚饭我也说中文。现在我反一下儿我英文的家信。

昨天我起自行车很慢了。我的自行车的辋没有空。我吉通我自行车的辋。今天我起自行车很快！

在学校我的课有很一点儿的学生。现在我有一个同学。生星期我有四个同学。可是，两个同学曲差一的课。我有一个说的老师和一个写的老师。

我问阿姨明天她可以帮我做中国的晚饭

Well, I know my translation has lots of mistakes so feel free to point them out . I could only translate a part of everything I wrote in English, but I’m trying to get in the habit of recognizing characters. I know a bunch already, but I’m trying to learn more

First of all … I’m so sorry it’s taken me so long to post to the blog. It took a couple of weeks to get Internet access to my home. Then, when I had Internet access, I didn’t have any time to write to my blog, lol. But, now that I’m all caught up with school, I wanted to catch you all up on what has been going on in China.

I’m adjusting really well to China. I have made some really good friends at the school and at home. I have met a Christian family at school and I am going to Church with them. We are going to a Chinese three-self church so the service, sermon and songs are all in Chinese. However, the church has bilingual hymnals and headsets for foreigners. The headsets provide an English translation of the sermon and the announcements. The translation is usually a little rough, but between listening to the Chinese and the English translation, I can get most of the sermon.

I haven’t been able to explore around Beijing as much as I’d like, but I know how to get around to the necessities. I know where to get hair cuts, how to get to school (and how to get home ), and how to get to the subway station. I’ve been really busy, but I’m starting to get some free time on the weekends where I can go out and explore the city. I’ve been traveling to and from school by bike and it has been quite interesting. When I started biking, it was the tail end of the Chinese New Year’s celebration, so there wasn’t a ton of traffic. However, now that traffic is in full swing, it is really busy. Even traveling by bike, you have to take in account the traffic is there are so many people. It is unreal how many people live in Beijing. Sometime I’ll have to take some video of the traffic. It can’t imagine what the city is going to be like during the Olympics.

School is going very well. It is very hard but good. We are moving at a break-neck speed and I feel that I am treading water, hanging on for dear life. This is the hardest that I’ve ever studied in my life. I have 6 - 9 hours of class each day and when I’m not in school, I’m studying. The classes are really small (3 - 7 people) so it really keeps the students engaged. The other classmates seem to be soaking up the information well, but I’m having a tougher time. I’m slightly dyslexic, so I’m constantly transposing and swapping things. I’ve made flash cards using jMemorize and that has been helping. I currently have well over 500 flash cards and I have a little over half memorized. I’ve been learning a lot so hopefully I’ll be able to make some posts in Chinese . In addition to my studies, I’ve been practicing my Chinese a lot. In addition to talking with Aunt and the other tenant, I also have a language partner that I have been doing language exchange with.

I’ve taken some pictures so hopefully I should get them online some time soon.

I miss every from home a lot. I’m online during the mornings and evenings so I’d love it if you could drop by and chat either by IM or by Skype. I’ve got all my contact information listed on my contact page.

I’ve been in China for about three days now and so far it has been great. Theride over was fairly smooth. The first leg of my flight was delayed so Ialmost missed the connecting flight to Japan. However, I hurried andmake it just in time.

My host mother is very nice. She wants me to call her “a-yi” (aunt). Theappartment is quite small by American standards. My room doubles as thedining room / TV watching room. There is a small kitchen, a small room(big enough for a bed and maybe 3-4 feet to spare) for a-yi and thenanoter larger bedroom that two other girls share (also tenents). Thebathroom is very different than I am accustomed to. The toilet is awestern style toilet, but attached to one side of the small bathroom isa shower head with a bucket underneath to catch the water. There is noseperate partition in the bathroom for the shower. It is a like a smallamerican bathroom with a shower head attached to one of the walls. Inaddition, the bathroom sink is not attached to the sewage outlets. Itsimply drins into a bucket underneath. Laundry is also done in thebathroom and then hung up on wire streatching the length of thebathroom.

a-yi speaks almost no English, so it has really put my Chinese to thetest

A couple of things about the diet in Beijing have surprised me. Firstly,we consume a lot more milk than I thought Chinese liked. We have about asmall bowl of milk every day. It isn’t like the milk in the states as itis bit sweeter. This morning, aunt gave me something different forbreakfast. The package said cow’s milk and something about a bee ( Icouldn’t fully understand it since it was in Chinese). I’m guessing iteither had honey or nector of some type in it. It tasted like theformer. It was quite strane, but good. Something else that surprised mewas the lack of salt. Usually, Chinese food is really salty, but aunt’sfood isn’t. For example, today we had dumplings and useally we eat itwith soy sauce. However, instead, we used rice vinager. She seems to userice vinager in place of soy sauce in a lot of her cooking.

Also, people don’t think it is strange for me to be in China. Beijinghas a lot of foreigners, and while I stick out, I’m not really unusuall,and people don’t really bat an eye.

I’ve been studying, speaking, and hearing Chinese constantly so I am soexaused every night. In just the three days I’ve been here, I’ve makeflash cards for 50 new words. It is hard as I forget words as soon as I“learn” them. Keeping up with all the new words is really tough. It isreally good that Aunt can’t speak English. She can’t explain things inEnglish and I can’t use any English so I’m forced to use Chinese. Mydictionary has been getting a lot of use.

I’m taking pictures and I will upload them to the website when I get a chance