Update

Hi everyone. I hope you haven't abandoned me. Sorry that I haven't written in a while. I think I can figure out a few more stories to tell, but for this entry I'll just update you with what's new here. First off I should mention the weather. For the past two weeks it has been rainy, cold, gloomy and even snowy. It's quite depressing. I've always appreciated the weather in Arizona, but being here with it like this makes me miss it even more. When I first came to China I thought that having to look at the sun through a haze of pollution was bad, but now I would love to have that back! It's not even so much that it is depressing that bothers me. I'm more bothered that I can't walk around the city and explore without being cold and wet. Apparently this is very unusual for this time of year. Oh well. Now that I have vented (whined) about the weather I'll talk about Chinese class. Four hours every day is no joke. I guess it actually ends up being about 3.5 hours with all the breaks we get. The class is divided into a comprehension section and a listening/speaking section. We have a different teacher for each section. A usual day consists of learning about 10 new characters, learning how to use those characters in a sentence, and then practicing how to properly pronounce those sentences. They stress repetition, which seems to be the key to learning this language. So far I am better at listening and speaking than reading and writing, but not by much. Since there is no alphabet you have to forget everything you know about language and start from scratch. One good thing about Chinese though is that the sentence structure is really simple. For example, if you want to ask someone to go to lunch with you it literally translates into the question, "Lunch?". It's almost as if you are talking like a caveman. "I hungry. I want eat" is a grammatically correct sentence. That explains the reason Chinese people speak English the way they do. Being in China makes all the difference when learning the language. After class you can go to lunch or go to a store and practice what you just learned. As of now my conversations are extremely limited, but maybe someday I'll learn how to say something other than "Hello. How are you?" or "How much does this cost?". Not knowing the language isn't all bad though. It forces you to express yourself through other means, which is a good skill to have. Sometimes things don't need to be spoken to be understood. Last night I went to a bar that's owned by a guy from Tennessee named Jimmy. It's a good spot to hang out, play pool, have a beer, and enjoy some decent American food. While I was there I met a couple local guys and played them each in pool. The first guy, Leroy, works there and speaks English fairly well. I played him and won the first game, which was close, and then basically got shutout in the second game. It was like playing a completely different person. It's a good thing I didn't get cocky and put money on the table because he would have cleaned me out. Getting hustled in a game of pool isn't high on my list of things to have happen to me while I'm in China. After I got crushed by Leroy in the second game I played the other guy, whose name I didn't catch. He didn't speak any English at all, but we still had a great time. We probably played for about an hour and I didn't lose to him once (a couple of those times he scratched on the 8-ball, but a win is a win). They were all hard fought battles though. My favorite part about playing him was dealing with the language barrier. Whenever we would miss an easy shot we would get excessively angry to show each other our discontent. We would shout obscenities in our native tongues and then try to repeat what the other had just said. If either of us sank a lucky shot, or made a really difficult one we would pat each other on the back and flash a big smile and thumbs up. We would get really excited if the game came down to who could make the 8-ball first. If we couldn't figure out the best shot to take we would help each other by pointing to a ball and then showing where to hit that particular ball. We quickly and easily established the rules through miming. A scratch resulted in removing a ball from the pocket and then placing the cue ball anywhere on the table. You had to call where you which pocket you wanted to put the 8-ball in and if you didn't make it in that one or if you scratched you lost. And finally, my favorite, the loser always racks the balls for the next game. The experience was great and showed me that there is much more to human interaction than just words. At the end of the night we shook hands and both left knowing that we have many more games left to play. I asked Leroy if that guy is a regular at the bar and he is. I plan to go back sometime soon and show him the finer points of pool once more. In closing, I'd like to mention the time I spent playing pool with my grandpa because this was the first time I have played pool in a while and it brought back some good memories. As soon as I was old enough to play on my grandpa's pool table (tall enough to see over it and steady enough to not mar his table with the cue after each shot) we would play every time I visited. We would listen to music on his jukebox, have a bottle of coke, and talk about things. The conversations changed as I aged, but the environment and feeling of playing pool never did. Grandpa had his sayings he would use depending on how the game was going. He had his phrases for winning and losing, or making shots and missing shots. When my grandma would walk in the room he would tell her one of two things; to stay (if he was winning) because was good luck or to leave (if he was losing) because she was bad luck. I still maintain that she was always good luck for me, so I was happy to have her stay in the room for as long as possible. Other than the sayings I picked up I also remember the advice about the game. He taught me to how to play the game, how to properly shoot, and how to aim so I could put the ball where I wanted. The reason I bring this up now is because as I was playing the Chinese man I found myself saying the things my grandpa would say for any given situation. I could hear him giving me tips about which ball to go for or if taking a certain shot would result in a scratch. I even sang some of the songs he would sing as we played. For some reason I had the strange urge to order a coke from the bar. Even though I am many miles away and in a foreign country it felt just like old times. I wouldn't trade those memories for anything. Grandpa, if you're reading this, thanks for the training you gave me. We should play a game for old times sake when I get back, but I should warn you that I'll probably be a lot better than before. Maybe we could put some money on the table? I'll have to ask Leroy to teach me how to hustle people...