Language Corner

A Japanese friend invited me to a language corner in the university.
Here you can have language exchange with Chinese Students. It turned
out I was the only English speaker there tonight (there were lots of
Japanese-Chinese speaking students) so I became quite popular with a
small group of Chinese students studying English. Chinese students
actually study English since high school, so I would say most if not
all can speak English. I also think that their English is usually
quite good, they just need to practise speaking more. We were
conversing in a mixture of mandarin and English, well, initially
mandarin until my mandarin runs out and then we spoke mostly
English...Then, I heard one of them commented (in mandarin), "her
pronunciation is good!"...huh? Did they mean my mandarin
pronunciation? It turned out that they meant that my English
pronunciation is quite good....hmmm....I sure hope so!! ha ha! Just
as an aside - they said that because last year they had an Australian
teacher and they couldn't understand a word he said! I find it really
funny when people say that my English is very good!!!

One of the girls wants us to become language partners, which is fine
with me. This means that we help each other - I help her with her
English and she helps me with my mandarin. She is really enthusiastic
though, and wants to meet for two hours every day!! I told her I
think we will start with meeting twice a week. I think I will share
her with another friend. Another girl wants to give my number to
another friend studying at Tsinghua University - she wants a language
partner on the weekends. I think I will be quite busy from now on!

It's actually a really good thing to have Chinese friends because
this will help my mandarin a lot. I'm also interested in their lives
- eg. what they do, how they live, etc. I've already had a glimpse -
one of the girls was curious about my dorm - how many people do I
share my room with, etc. I actually have my own room. Chinese
students have to share their rooms with 4-6 people, and often have to
share a common bathroom with everyone in the building. So I'll have
to count myself very lucky with my room (although quite expensive for
Chinese standards), but then I visited another foreign student's
dorm, which I find quite OK - clean but old...I'd would have to say
my little room is quite luxurious, even if the bathroom floods during
showers & no heating until November 15th!