Doing the Cha-Cha in China

This will be my last post until I return from Beijing on April 20. My February trip was very short, so I'm glad I'll have a week to discover the Chinese capital. I almost can't believe I'm meeting my mom in Beijing tomorrow - yeah! Mother/daughter travels continue, this time in the most exotic locale yet. We've been to England, Scotland, France, Belgium and Germany together. We were in New York last year. Mom is also coming with me to DC in August to help me settle into my new digs there. Clearly, Mom and I are good travel companions.

Besides Beijing, I've been to Nanjing and Suzhou - though I haven't recounted those excursions on my blog. I'm going to be totally lazy now and direct my readers to Peter Youngblood's blog: http://pwyoungblood.blogspot.com/ Peter has an excellent and funny recap of last week's Suzhou journey. My camera battery died as soon as I got to Suzhou, but thankfully Peter and Adrienne (our other travel buddy) took tons of photos.

Returning to the topic of my last post - learning another language - after I posted it, I had a recollection of me and my brother sitting at the dining room table, singing the Mr. Christie tagline in both English and French: Mr. Christie you make good cookies! / M. Christie vous faites de bons biscuits! Ahhh..... to be learning a language where the main concern is whether something is masculine or feminine. Those were the days.

The topic of my last blog came from a frustrating day with Zhong wen... Chinese. Today was much better. I met my new friend "Eva" at Nan da jie and went with her to a Latin dance class. She invited me a few days ago.... how could I pass up the chance to do the cha-cha in China? I took a few lessons in Latin jazz dance a few years ago. Well - I discovered that it becomes much more difficult when you can't understand what the instructor is saying. It was a challenge, but lots of fun. I should have taken a photo.... I may have another chance as Eva has invited me to attend regularly. Almost all the other participants are her colleagues. This was the first class. They have to decide on a regular day and time. If I can manage it with my teaching schedule, I think I'll sign up.

After dance class, we decided to walk around a nearby park. One of Eva's colleagues, "Vivie", joined us. We spent a very pleasant day together and I had two friendly and patient native Chinese speakers to practice with. I feel like I made real progress today.

In the park

Vivie and Eva in the park - and some amused onlookers

A good day for flying a kite

They taught me Chinese and I introduced them to that most sacred of expat hangouts - the coffee house

Prior to the dance class, Eva and I had lunch and she showed me how to write my Chinese name in characters. Yes, I now have a Chinese name! I asked students at English Corner last week to give me a Chinese name. I think it's cool they get to pick English names..... so naturally I want a Chinese name. They gave me one that sounds something like my real name - "ài mǐ " (爱米). It's pronounced roughly as "Eye-Me". Translated it means "loves rice", though Eva assures me it is a lovely name. Their names carry more meaning than ours, though I believe my parents picked "Amy" because it means "love". So I have a very fitting Chinese name for a few reasons.... but I'm not so sure about loving rice. I eat it here at least once, something twice, a day. Something tells me that when I go home, rice isn't the first thing I'll want to eat. That honour goes to a nice, big, juicy BBQ steak! (Hint, hint Dad)

And finally - Happy Easter to everyone back home!