Chinese Birthday Plays

Jun 04, 2005 23:39

Today was my first day of Chinese classes. I went down to the Chinese community center in West Houston, and only got a little lost. The class is Beginning Chinese for Adults, and I must say THANK GOD it is for adults, because the three year olds know more then I do. Today we started off by going around and introducing ourselves. Most of the people in the class are older than me by a few years at least. The white people in the class are either interested in learning Chinese for business or in order to impress their in-laws/future in-laws/girl friend’s parents. There are some people who are just trying to learn a different dialect, and then there is one guy who is older than the rest of us. He came over from China in 1956, but his parents refused to let him speak anything except for English and now he wants to relearn it. I thought that it was interesting, because I generally think of Chinese parents as being very attached to their culture and a little unwilling to let go of the language.
The teacher seems like she will be very nice. She has never taught before, but she is trying and very willing to try new things.
When we started to learn Chinese we started out talking about tones. In Chinese the tone and inflection in each word/syllable is very important. The word “ma” can mean mother, hemp, horse, or curse depending upon the inflection that you use. So you have to be very careful to pronounce stuff with the proper tone, or else you could end up insulting the person to which you are speaking. Crazy huh?
Then there are the initial sounds and the final sounds in words. As far as I can tell, the initial sounds aren’t exactly sounds so much as the way that you form your mouth and move your tongue when you say the final sound. It is kind of like “w” or “q” in English. It doesn’t have a sound by its self, but when you join it with other letters you get a distinct sound.
Also, in English the way that you move your lips has a lot to do with the sound that is produced. In Chinese your mouth is kind of flattened (most of the time), and you use different parts of your tongue to produce different sounds.
This is going to be challenging. But fun!

We also did daddy’s birthday dinner at the Mockingbird Bistro. Good food. I had a veal chop with mushrooms and yummy sauce, and risotto. Meredith and Laura had herb incrusted lamb chops that where also very good. For dessert: flourless chocolate cake with white chocolate ice cream and fresh berries.
In the valet parking outside there was a line of black BMWs with UT stuff on them. It was amazing especially because they didn’t show up as a group. Then as the black BMWs left they were replaced by black Mercedes. Mercedeses?
If you stood up someone would come up and ask if you wanted to go to the restroom, and then show you the way. And if you left your napkin in your seat then the manager would come over and fold it and place it back on the table. That was funny!

In other news the summer free play schedule is up. My sisters and I are going to go see
The Music Man on July 21st at 8:15 pm
Hamlet on August 4th at 8:30 pm
As You Like It on August 11th at 8:30 pm
If you would like to attend show up and find us. If you would like to be fed contact me prior to you showing up and I’ll tell you want we are doing for sustenance.
Come. Be entertained. Stop being heathens.

family, food, languages, plays

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