New housemate!
Yesterday heralded the arrival of a new housemate. (One of our housemates was transferred overseas by her company, so we had an extra room available.)
I'm excited coz this new housemate is Chinese-educated and therefore I can practice my (pathetic) Mandarin with her! LOL
The last three years I was in college, I roomed with a girl who was also Chinese-educated. When I moved in with her, it was quite obvious that she was more comfortable speaking Chinese rather than English. I was embarrassed coz I can't speak decent Chinese, despite having the tell-tale "yellow skin" - and I didn't want her to think I was stuck-up or trying to show off by prattling on in English.
So, I brought out the few Mandarin phrases I did know, and gave them an airing. We struck a deal: she was to help me with my Mandarin, and I would help her with her English. Only, the way things worked out, she kept on forgetting to speak to me in English, which meant I got the best of the deal!
You should have heard our conversations. I'd be telling her something, then I'd get stuck for the right word to use. "How do you say 'jealous'?" I'd ask. She'd give me the word, I'd repeat it, and then I'd simply resume the sentence exactly where I'd left off, as if there had never been any interruption at all!
During summer hols, when I went home for three months, I wrote her letters. In Chinese, mind you! It was quite tedious - I had to stop to look up almost every word. But it was also a challenge. I made very good friends with my English-Chinese dictionary :)
When I got back, she went over my letters with me, pointing out my mistakes. I remember writing that I was so frustrated, I'd wanted to tear my hair out - translating that phrase, "tear my hair out", directly from English to Chinese. She couldn't understand what I'd been trying to say. "There's no such saying in Mandarin!" she exclaimed. We had a good laugh over that one!
In the two years since I graduated and moved away, I haven't had much opportunity to speak Mandarin to anyone. As a result, I'm afraid my Mandarin-speaking abilities have seriously gone down the drain - I can't remember half the words I used to know. So I'm really looking forward to having someone to speak Mandarin to once again!