How To Express...

If you have been having doubts concerning your ability to communicate with others, my advice is that you travel to a foreign country, where they not only don't understand what you are trying to say, but they don't understand what you are saying to begin with.

This past Tuesday, one of my co-teachers and I were driven to an elementary school where we were going to be teaching for the afternoon.  Our driver came into the school to pick us up, and ironically, on the day that our teaching aid was not going with us, the driver did not speak English.  We remembered how to ask "What is your name?", but that was about it, and after about fifteen minutes of driving silently through the country, "Where are we going?!" was a question we wished we knew how to ask - normally, our schools are less than five minutes away.  Finally we arrived, and taught three classes each of our youngest grades yet.  Usually we teach the fifth and sixth graders, but this time, it was 1-3 graders...they were so adorable!  When it was time to go home, we told the driver that we needed to go back to our train station...however, 'train' was the only part of what we said that he understood.  We found ourselves in the little town's own train station, and it was up to the two of our combined three months worth of Chinese abilities to get home.  We looked at each other and grinned - if anything, this would definitely be an adventure.  We remembered how to buy the tickets, but we really needed to figure out when our train actually left.  Between the station master and the reader board, we finally understood that our train left in about forty minutes, so we set out to explore the town.  We decided that snacks were a positive thing and both of us picked up smoothies (ordering in Chinese) and had a conversation with one of the locals, who spoke quite a bit of English.  Many conversations here involve piecing together of Chinese and English (which is the next common language after Chinese).  It makes for quite interesting and animated discussions at times.

I think that every day here, I learn a little bit more of how little sometimes you really need language to communicate (at least - in the most minor of dramatic circumstances), whether it's by me trying to say something, or someone else trying to speak to me....my little students demonstrated this to me in class one day when I couldn't understand one of their questions.  It was a matter of quite urgent importance, and as they watched me shake my head with the blank look that creeps onto my face much too often here, they realized that if the matter was to be resolved, they had to make me understand - and fast... one little kid kept blurting out the one word in English that they knew - "WC! WC!"  Of course, between all the chaos, I was not focused enough to get it - until one of the students finally stood up and 'mimed' to me the dilemma.  For those of you who know what 'WC' means, I think you will appreciate the humour of the particular dilemma that I found myself in...

Every time I speak in Chinese here, I always hold my breath until I see them nod and exclaim... then procure the item I requested.  It's definitely fun to be able to speak another language, but as someone told me, 'I'm not just learning the language, but I'm learning how to learn another language..."  I know that God brought me here for a reason, and I'm pretty sure that the things I learn here are going to be a part of His future plans for me...even though I don't know what exactly that is yet.