a "wall" of chinese

Learning Chinese is difficult. Our friend told us that when we first begin studying, all you hear is a "wall" of Chinese coming at you. But as you progress, you start to disassemble that "wall," màn man zǒu (slowly), by picking out words you know and listening carefully for phrases within a context. Well right now, the "wall" is punching me (us) in the face. But progress has been made, and we've been able to take out little pieces of the "wall" to see the Chinese culture on the other side. The bus on the way to school has been a good measure of the progress we've made. The automated recording that spits out where you are in the city, how to get off the bus, etc. is becoming more and more familiar. At first, she was just a "wall" of Chinese, but now I can understand 30% of what she says. First I recognized the word "door," then "please," then "back door," then it all came together, "please exit using the back door." Well, that's 30% in 10 lessons. Maybe by the end of the semester, I'll be at 90%.

Below is a picture of Laura and our teacher Melinda. We use these flash cards to learn new vocab words. Well this week we've been camped out on clothes. Vocab topics can often lead to off subject discussions. For example, in this picture Laura and Melinda are discussing their favorite shoes, etc. (Oddly enough, Melinda and Laura are quite similar; they both think tights are cute, but not on them, they don't like wearing heels, and ballet flats are their favorite shoe).