Saturday, July 4, 2009

Dreaming in Chinese

At orientation our head teacher, Feng Laoshi, told us we'd soon start dreaming in Chinese, which would be a proud milestone in our journey to fluency, worthy of celebration and fanfare, etc etc. Truth be told, I've found my dreams in Chinese less of a triumph and more of a continuation of daily communication struggle. Por ejemplo,

1) I'm standing outside, washing my arms with a bar of soap (...uh) and Yu laoshi comes up to me, points at the soap and asks me in Chinese if I know what soap is called in Chinese. I say no, and he says something like "kuan", which is definitely not the word for soap (thanks dream Yu-laoshi). I repeat "kuan", and then lo and behold it's not "kuan", it's "kuAN". We repeat the word several times and then I wake up annoyed that I can't even get tones right of words my own subconscious made up. Bummer.

2) My classmates and I are washing a bicycle. A teacher comes up to us, and suddenly the bicycle is a tiny clown-sized car. We're all surprised. Then it's an Accord. The teacher strokes it and says to us "怎么这么panda?", or "How is it so 'panda'?". I am confused, then wake up.

2 comments:

  1. I think you should have gone on that clown-sized Accord panda adventure. Don't let your logic get the best of your dreams.

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  2. "I wake up annoyed that I can't even get tones right of words my own subconscious made up. Bummer."

    LOL!

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