Speaking Chinese

I've been taking Chinese lessons for about 3 months now and am so grateful for the progress (however little) that I have made.  At first I was skeptical.  A 2 hour lesson once a week?  Like that's ever going to teach me anything.

But it has!  I love my teacher.  She is so well prepared, patient and funny.  She always has a Chinese joke to tell me that relates to the new vocab we are learning.  Yesterday she told me a joke about 2 bananas walking down the street... and I was able to translate.

The best thing about learning Chinese has been the way it has helped me practically.
*I can now go to the grocery store and ask where the spinach is.  No clearly labeled triple washed baby spinach leaves here, remember?  The 菠菜 sits among its other green cousins who look a whole lot like him.  And I don't know my characters so it's not like I can just read the signs.
*I can talk about my kids.  Yes all 3 are mine.  Here are their ages.
*I can talk about myself.  I am American.  (They usually don't believe me, staring at me in disbelief.)  Fine, I'm Korean.  (That usually gets me a nod of satisfaction.)
*I can ask how much something costs.
*I can ask if I can try something on at a clothing store.
*I can throw in a few words to accompany my pointing at a picture menu when ordering at a restaurant.

And today, I asked for directions.  There is some heavy duty road construction going on in front of our neighborhood so we have to be creative in finding other ways home if need be.  Lately we have had to pass our exit and keep going on the main road towards the airport, make a u-turn and take our exit coming from the other direction.  But tonight, my usual u-turn place was no more.  They had come up and put up barriers.  Not flimsy little flattened cones that we had driven over before.

Those jerks.

So I just kept going until I reached the airport.  Then I had no choice but to go to the parking lot.  I started to panic.  There was just no place to turn around.  I couldn't see the exit.  I got to the place where you get the tickets for the parking lot and saw a Chinese police man there.  I said in Chinese, "I want to return there (here I gestured back the way I came from), to 机场路 (airport road).  How do I get there?" He took a moment to look down at the diplomatic plates, saw that I was driving a Honda Odyssey (rare here), and registered my what I imagine to be a gringo accent.  Then got me a ticket in to the parking lot (which turned out to be free) and just pointed to the right direction (which involved lots of loops), didn't even bother with words.

I was so proud of myself!  If I were to ever get lost, I could always find my way back by asking someone for directions.  I can do this!  Bring it, Shenyang!!!

We are getting a GPS with downloadable international maps, just in case.