Communication

Never easy, though it is getting better and some days I feel like I am really getting somewhere.

Still trying to get over a Chinese friend who wanted to do a language exchange with me, telling last week my speaking in Chinese was not very clear! (This is despite hardly ever having a problem being understood as long as I know the words for what I want to say...) This was followed by her daughter completely not understanding my trying to ask her 'Is the food nice?' (in Chinese). Now this is something I have said about a million times and up until now never had a problem being understood. Though it is of course possible her daughter thought that I was speaking to her in English!

But yesterday was good. I had a really good chat with a taxi driver who works on ships and has been to Britain and Ireland amongst other places. He also knew a few words of English, which helped matters enormously. I managed to answer quite a few of his questions in Chinese, understand what he said to me and even asked him a couple of questions of my own.

Then I had a brief chat with the woman who puts credit on my mobile phone for me. I can say much more to her than I could back in September, though that's not really saying much! It generally ends up being about the weather or something equally scintillating. Conversations tend to run their course fairly quickly when I have exhausted my limited vocabulary and selection of phrases. Oh well, it's still not bad. It's all progress, I guess.