Shanghai hěn lěng!
Today was my first day of Chinese lessons! Well…at least of my second attempt to learn Chinese in class. This time with a lot moe motivation, a lot more time (3 mornings per week, 2.5 hours each), a lot better teacher and a lot more costly… 😉 But it’s definitely worth the money as I think I can already judge after the first day. Certainly, I can’t tell if all teachers are that good, but if you need a professional language school in Shanghai (or Guangzhou as I just figure it when linking the web site), give iMandarin a try…OK, enough advertisment for them 😉
After a fairly brief test 2 weeks ago I have been levelled “between Beginner 1 and 2”, so I was ‘allowed’ to start with Beginner 2 and so I did today. No problem, I do have that level, pretty sure. Was actually fun, although also work. It’s a very small group, just two students and the teacher. (I thought the group would be three students…well…maybe that’s gonna come.) The teacher is in so far a lot better than the previous ones I had years ago as she speaks a lot of Mandarin during class, also for task explanation. So you have to listen, you have to stay concentrated, as listening is one of the challenges, at least for me. But she can speak English very well for those (yet very often) cases when English explanations are unavoidable. And she forces us quite often to speak ourselves, partly reading from the very good book, partly freely. Practise, practise, practise…the only way to learn a language. Very good 😉
As it happens to be…the lesson’s topic was the weather. A good smalltalk topic. And not worth mentioning here if not just today Shanghai got freezing cold…which, actually, is the difference between “leng” and “bing”…maybe it is already “Shanghai bing” 😉
Remember my weather report on my Shanghai start page? Here’s a copied, i.e. frozen version of 2007-03-5 22:22, that means: Beginning of March, beginning of spring! 3˚C only! I had left my home with a business shirt and jacket only, not with the sweater I used to wear in the past weeks, because I really though winter’s over now: There was nothing even faintly resembling winter. No ice-cold winds like last year. No coming back to the appartment in sweater, jacket, and scarf and the first things you do is turn up the air condition (I’m still a German-educated energy saver and turn it down or off when I leave the house), walk into the kithcen, start the gas stove and stay next to it for a minute, and then only get slowly off the jacket…the scarf comes off only a lot later. None of all that this year. And today, with my first Chinese lessions in class, covering the topic ‘weather’ we learn words like ‘temperature difference’ (they really have a workd for it…温差=wēnchā) and can immediately match it to reality. I was quite happy that today I found a direct tunnel between the subway station and the bank tower with the training center…
Looking at the weather forecast (天气预报=tiānqì yùbào) it will stay that cold for the next 2 days, then slowly get better. Hm…maybe I do not yet clean up the gloves and scarfs still flying around here…and tomorrow I definitely wear the sweater right away. For work 🙁
Categories: Shanghai
Originally Created: 03/05/2007 03:07:08 PM
Last Edited: 03/05/2007