Tag: Chinese

Quizlet

I have been using my first Quizlet and the first shared with me the past two days. A fellow classmate shared his Chinese flash cards with me, and I then went and added pronunciations to them to make my own set. Now, I can practice them as both just characters and meanings and with pronunciations, too.

I still need to make my own hard copy set, but this is good practice for now, and it took minimal time to ‘create’ them, so I accept the do-for.

Thank you, God, for this wonderful chance to learn and expand and improve myself, both as a person and student, but also as a teacher, too. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

P.S. Please, keep my man and the dog and their stuff all safe, please. Give him the confidence and the words he most needs. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Huzzah!

Well, the food and the film were a total success. AND I loved them both, and also the company.

I made fried wild rice, butternut squash noodle lo mein, and orange chicken (optional) and veggies – Chinese take-out, but homemade and paleo. The fried rice could have even been enough for any of us for the whole meal, but I wanted a spread. However, I am always very delighted and even a touch proud of myself for making the eggs the right way for the fried rice. It still blows my mind whenever I think about how to do it, and I am yet again grateful for my acrobat friend for showing me how to do it back on the train that one day. **gratitude**

Anyway, the food was amazing and bourgie, and we all loved it and managed no photos, despite the fact that it all was beautiful food. Everything was colorful and lovely to see, but also delicious to smell and eat.

And then we all really enjoyed the film. Sure, there were parts all over the place that were poorly done (e.g. animation, sequencing, transitions…), but it overall was really great, the setting was bea-utiful, and the music was very nicely managed. Also, the accents were all quite reassuring – yes, the primary audience is an American English one, but that doesn’t mean the characters have to sound like they live here. I am glad they had genuine Chinese-based accents, and names were still pronounced properly, even though everyone was speaking English. Just because the language spoken is changed doesn’t mean the culture has to disappear. Good job, Disney. We all enjoyed it tonight, and we all are grateful for your efforts. Thank you.

P.S. Links to the recipes for the lo mein and the orange chicken sauces I made 😉

Post-a-day 2020

Mulan

Tomorrow night, we will be watching Mulan (the live-action, not the animated) for the first time. While we aren’t sure about dressing up – yes, we do dress to theme when we see films and shows in theatres, so we have no reason not to do it at home, too, right now – we are planning to have Chinese food for dinner. Since, however, we all prefer to follow more the paleo type of diet, I am brainstorming options of easy-to-prepare-by-myself dishes. I’ve done the chicken fried wild rice before, so that’s on the list. All I need to add are eggs* and carrots, which are easy enough to procure. I’m wondering if an egg-drop soup could be possible, or something like szechuan veggies or something… Going to check with a friend of mine who cooks bourgie stuff, too, and who happens to be Chinese. I think she might have some tried and true ideas. Fingers crossed!

*Fun fact: When I spent all that time with the acrobats, I learned on the train how to cook eggs the way Chinese people do for fried rice – never how I would have guessed, but I am super glad I learned it, because it is delicious! Also, I realize that could be referring to either how I learned to cook it or how it is actually cooked – both were never how I would have guessed, so I guess the unclear statement was, in fact, true, no matter the interpretation! 😛 (Slash, yes, hashtag nerd/dork, I know.) 😀

Post-a-day 2020

Asian-English teatime with the bff sister

This evening, by a wonderful unfolding of events, I ended up having tea with my best friend’s little sister.  As my best friend’s little sister, she holds a sweet spot in my heart.  What’s more, the fact that she’s the first person I’ve seen go from little kid, singing nursery-rhyme-type songs, to a mature young adult (and soon full-blown adult), makes that spot even sweeter.

As we sat in the tapioca teahouse, drinking our warm (Taiwanese style, I think – at least, that’s what a friend of mine saw constantly while in Taiwan, and which we haven’t seen much elsewhere) bubble tea, our attention somehow turned to the menu on the wall.  Naturally, we hadn’t thought anything special of it when we actually were looking at the menu to order earlier on, but it was suddenly relevant to our conversation, so our attention turned to it.  She is studying Mandarin this year (since August), and I’ve just moved here from Japan.  So, we have some common ground on understanding Chinese characters.  (For those who don’t know, Japanese kind of stole the characters from Chinese, and adapted them a bit, so loads of them look exactly or almost exactly the same and have the same or very similar meanings.)

We joyfully pointed out that “ice” was on the end of each name in the ‘Snowy Drink’ category, and that “little” was next to one other character on the “Snacks” sections – likely ‘little meal’ or ‘little food’.  Something like that.  And then we discussed how we were scouring the menu, picking out little pieces that we understood.  It was like a fun little puzzle that we were putting together, piece by piece… one that we know will take months, even years, but the timing of which doesn’t seem to bother us in the slightest.  We’re just excited that we’re able to make the little sense of it all that we already can.  And we aren’t even using the same language to do it, technically, making it simultaneously that much sillier and that much more awesome.

So, we got to enjoy one another’s company and be nerdy language-lovers together, while sipping warm asian versions of English tea (Earl Grey) on a cold, cold night (for Houston, anyway).  Blessings abound when open our minds and schedules to them, it seems.  And I am grateful for this one in particular.  🙂

Post-a-day 2017