November 26, 2004
Another day off – yippee! Kim and I lounged around and drank coffee all morning. At noon we walked to school for our first Chinese lesson. She has been here 5 months and never had one but has picked up so much that she is teaching me also. Mandarin is a crazy language to learn.

There are basically 5 ways to say each letter of the alphabet with four different tones (straight, up, down and one is a combination of up & down and another soft tone) They use the same alphabet a-z but pronounce them totally different. For instance c is pronounced j, x is pronounced sh, i is pronounced e……….and the list goes on. My Chinese name is Jian Ai which means clear love which is pronounced gee a an eye or something like that………..I’ve only had one lesson!
The rest of the day I spent working at home on my 6 lesson plans for the weekend. I only got 3 done when Kim came home and Heather from next door came over. We went down the street to the Milo Coffee House for something to eat. When we got back Kim invited Chi Chi over. She’s Grace’s 5 year old daughter. She likes to come over and draw. Kim put on the movie Hercules for her and we watched it. After she left we watched What Women Want with Mel Gibson then I headed to bed. It was a relaxing lazy day which I needed.