Week 18: 第十八周
Don't little look me 别小看我
I once heard my aunt say "underestimate" in Chinese, and I pretty easily guessed what it meant because "xiao kan" literally means "little look." The problem is this week I forgot how to say it in English. I had to use my dictionary to look up "xiao kan" in Chinese to find the English translation because I was wanting to say "little look". This was my first time using my 2nd language to look up how to say something in my mother tongue. I looked at the dictionary entry for quite a while and it still didn't seem right to me.
One time I did momentarily forget how to say fruit juice in both English and Chinese, but I remembered it in Italian, which is not at all useful because I don't even speak Italian and neither did the people I was talking to.
My dad was right. He said, "You haven't completely learned Chinese but your English is getting worse."
My roommate has been encouraging though. She sent me a meme informing me that my version of bilingualism is actually "byelingual" because I'm losing vocabulary in both languages.
Happy Valley 欢乐谷
Wednesday I decided to skip class and go ride rollercoasters all day (again). This time I went to Happy Valley and there were basically no people there and no lines for the rides. The rollercoasters were super awesome. A lot better than Shanghai Disneyland. I did see a fully grown Chinese woman cry and hold her boyfriend because she was scared to ride a rollercoaster, which was a first for me. I also realized I usually just make a judgmental face and don't respond when random men start talking to me. I feel like if I respond in Chinese they'll think I want to hold conversation, and if I respond not in Chinese then they'll think I'm a weak, confused foreigner (which I sometimes am). I'm not sure why I went from saying I like rollercoasters to hating on strange men.
Rock Climbing
I went rock climbing with my roommate, my classmate, and 3 of my roommate's friends. I asked the guy from the Netherlands how many languages he can speak and he responded, "somewhere between 5 and 10 languages." It was confusing with people speaking English, Chinese, and Japanese, and I sometimes had to ask my roommate to translate my Chinese into Japanese for people to understand me. I think this picture is really blurry because the guy's hands were shaking from rock climbing, but it's still a happy picture.
Thanks for reading!
I definitely forgot to finish (and start on) my Powerpoint presentation, so I should go to that. Thanks for reading, and see you next Thursday!