Things have improved since my last note. About two or three weeks ago, I was spending time with some friends. I was talking to Charlie, a Chinese man, and like usual, really having trouble communicating. Shortly thereafter, I started talking to him, and I was understanding some of what he said to me. I am not trying to say that after that moment, I was fluent, but I was more confident. I have been spending time at the local store talking to the women that work there. I find that I can express many of my ideas in Chinese, what a great feeling! After so much time of frustration and heartache, my work is paying off. There are many words I do not know, but I have a lot of linguistic tools at my disposal that I can use. Granted, those women have to use some language barrier gymnastics to understand my GaoYuan Hua (高原话） GaoYuan (高原) is my Chinese name, and hua (话) is one of the Chinese words for language. What I am saying is that I make many mistakes when speaking Chinese that sometimes I feel I am speaking my own dialect of Chinese.
I find that I am better able to express myself if I feel confused, frustrated or upset. These are things I could not do in the past.
Where I live, people speak different types of Chinese. Some people are easier to understand than others. Sometimes, I talk to people whose pronunciation is so different that I cannot understand them at all, and sometimes I want to correct them. The local accent is very difficult for me to understand, it is remarkably different than standard Mandarin. Well, at least I think it is. Perhaps a native speaker may not think so.
I guess that is all I want to say right now.
