More fun with a foriegn language

Hello blog world!

It's been a very long time since I have wrote anything, and since I've got 30 minutes to kill before the calls start for the evening, I thought I'd give it a shot.

As you all know, I've been working to learn the Chinese language. There are times I make great progress, and then there are weeks on end that I seem to go backwards.

A few weeks ago, I had a major breakthrough. This is one of those moments when you not only understand a lot more, but you also understand how they think.

This, again, has to do with time. In Chinese, when you say ahead physically, it is qianmian. Behind you is houmian.

Now, if you want to say the future you say yihou, but if you want to say the past you say yiqian.

The character qian (前）and hou (后）are the same in both words.

In my world, you stand looking forward at the future. In China, you stand looking forward at the past. Amazing.

This small difference makes things a whole lot clearer. Chinese people rarely plan... as if they don't see any point in looking "down the road". Well, if you grew up from the very first part of your ability to think with the orientation that you can only see the past, I can see why planning would appear to be meaningless.

I think I have also told you that they see time rolling down a hill, right? You see, to say morning you say shangwu and to say afternoon is xiawu. Shang (上) means above or up and Xia (下) means below or down. So, you start your day up high and end it low.

Jackie does much better at giving details of day to day life. She can explain the fun I had today dealing with the move. I cannot believe that we have been here a year. Parts of it seem like we have been here 20, others seems like yesterday.

Like I was told during my first few days here, you have Shanghigh and Shanglow days. That's all part of it.