min.

i met my 2nd language partner yesterday. her name is min or jasmine. she is just as lovely as my first. she is a 37 yo shanghainese, who manages an IT company. her husband also works in an IT company. she has no children and when i asked why, she said they are alot of work and she wouldn't have any spare time. i found that interesting for a local chinese woman to feel that way. i was the first ABC she has ever met and she paid me a huge compliment. she said i had better Chinese than many hongkies! she found it puzzling i was even looking for a language partner and had no idea i even spoke chinese. when i asked if she could tell if i was from america, she said no, i looked like i could have been from singapore, taiwan or HK. i was pleased with that too. local camouflage power ON! we talked about local culture, and how most big cities are the same, how urban youngsters do the same leisure activities around the world, how she has visited CA and seen all the touristy places and liked it all. she said many locals are looking for english lang partners but there aren't enough to go around. she said there are many more europeans expats in china than americans so learning non-accented english and slang was a challenge. i was surprised but agreed as i have met more euros than americans here thus far. she has never had a lang partner. we met at Latina, a Brazilian bbq restaurant at the pedestrian at Gateway Plaza, where she had some sort of milk tea cappuccino and i had a very gross sour fruit tea. she ate some tiramisu. she is very matronly, probably b/c of her age. she said she only wants to casually practice her english and this gives her a chance to form friendships too. i realized that's what i wanted to. i wanted local friends. she has a gentle and kind demeanor and looks young for her age and is cute. we laughed about how my family thinks my chinese sucks and wants me to improve on it. and how they are tired of explaining things to me. i told her it was easier to understand her than my other lang partner for some reason. when i told her sarah was 25, she said youngsters use different slang and words and that was probably why. i told her i can't understand what the bank teller says, the soaps and news and she said probably b/c when it comes to language used specifically in an industry, it gets hard. but she was confused why i couldn't understand the soap operas. we will meet again next week. she was embarassed to use her english and said it feels funny to speak english to another chinese. i assured her i understood english too and she laughed. i said next week we will try to speak more english b/c this week we just spoke chinese. she said she had never really had the chance to practice speaking her english, much like the other educated locals who can understand, read and write but don't reallly speak english.

dave calls me a language whore. :)