sarah.

so i decided i was going to find a language partner if it was the last thing i did here. i wrote back to classified ads (many of which seem shady and didn't respond anyway) and requests on the expat forum. after many emails and some searching, i found a language partner who works near where we live. her name is sarah and she's delightful.

some things about sarah:

she is from jiangsu province, which is a neighbor province to SH. she comes from a small town there, and the name eludes me.
she has been in SH for 1 year.
she works in a french marketing company where they create chinese brand names for non chinese items.
she majored in some sort of business or finance.
she works with germans, french and canadians and they all speak chinese with her and each other.
she has never had a language partner.
she went to college in wuhan and lived there 2 years. she says there's nothing to see there.
she has traveled around many parts of china.
she said her favorite place in china is chengdu which is the capital of sichuan province. she says the scenery there is breathtaking and life is laid back.
she lives near where i work.
she works near where i live.
she is a thin, pleasant looking girl who has pretty good english, IMO.
she is a great language exchange partner b/c she corrects my chinese, teaches me chinese characters and is nice about it when she does.
she is around my age.
she prefers chinese food.
her name in chinese is lu sujuan.
we will meet once a week in the evening.

she asked me how we should do this as she has never had a language partner. i said usually the person wanting to learn mandarin only should speak mandarin and the person wanting to learn english should only use english and we correct each other when necessary. i think i'm sorta a bad language partner. i hope she meets up with me again. i forgot to correct her grammar, mostly b/c i grew up around bad english and think it's normal and can understand it. she actually corrected herself at one point. i was relieved she was a great language partner b/c she corrected all the phrases and grammar that i embarassingly have been using all my life.

some things i learned:
-you don't say the weather is "warm" in chinese, it's either hot or cold. i basically translated my english to what i thought could be said in chinese. you can say nuanhuo but you can't say wun. that refers to food.
-when you ask someone's surname you don't ask, ni de gui xing? you say, ni gui xing or gui xing?
-she taught me some chinese characters on a receipt she had, which i don't recall and wish i wrote down in pinyin
-people here love KTV where u drink, sing and play games. they like bars too.
-the shanghai expo mascot is supposed to be some sea creature but it looks like toothpaste.
-the best places to buy cheap clothing is at little vendor shops or the street vendors where they lay out the clothing. apparently $10 US for a tshirt is a decent deal.
-the squat pots are considered toilets too
-the West Lake in hangzhou is the largest natural lake in china.
-she says the SH train station which is the stop she gets off for work is dirty and filled with tons of bums. i have not gotten off at that stop. this is in contrast to the S. SH railway station where i get off which is pretty nice and clean and new.

anyway, i am thinking of getting another language partner in addition to sarah so i can get different perspectives, hopefully from a male, and someone who can speak SH-nese. i got a small notebook i will start jotting down terms and sayings and characters when i meet with sarah. i left feeling embarassed at how bad my chinese really is and realizing how complex this language is.