10 Things to give a traveler

During the holidays, we like to remember our friends & family with cards & gifts. But what do you do when there is a traveler in your life? They might not stay in one place long enough to receive anything you could send through the mail. It might seem hopeless to include them on your holiday card mailing list.

But there is still a way - the internet is a wonderful thing. There are so many digital gifts & e-cards out there. Besides, your traveler probably doesn't need any more stuff. Here are ten things you can give a traveler without weighing down their luggage.

1. Credit at Amazon.com for Kindle e-books, digital music & more
2. Virtual language lessons - a couple of my favorites: ChinesePod, Lo Más TV
3. Online exercise classes - MyYogaOnline.com
4. Netflix membership - the streaming only option
5. A membership at Hostelling International
6. A donation to their favorite charity - I like Kiva.org 
7. Your unused frequent flyer miles
8. A tour in or around their current location
9. A visit - meet them somewhere!
10. A phone call - Skype.com

Wishing you a happy holiday season & a new year filled with adventure.

Memrise: A vocabulary study tool

I've recently discovered a website called Memrise. It's a fun vocabulary study tool that lets you study in short five-minute chunks. The interface is based on growing your vocabulary "garden". When you want to learn new words, you "plant seeds", words that you're studying need "watering", & words that you've gotten right consistently are "harvested".

Here's my greenhouse:

As you can see, I have three wilting plants in my garden - the ones that I got wrong during my last study session - but I can water them (study some more) to make them healthy again. 

It looks like Memrise started as a Chinese language study tool, but lots of other languages are available as well, including Spanish, Polish & Biblical Hebrew. You can even use it to increase your vocabulary in English so that you can finally ace the Sunday crossword puzzle.

I've been using Memrise while I'm at work to exercise my mind at the beginning of the day or when I need a short break from editing in the middle of the day. It's a great way to jump start my brain & much better for me than Angry Birds!

Language Learning Plateau

Flat Iron - Phoenix, Arizona

I've been living in Shanghai, China for a year & a half now. Since I got here, I've been diligently studying Mandarin Chinese in hopes of adding it to my linguistic repertoire. It's been slow going, but I think I've finally reached a new level.

Learning a language is never easy, but there are times when it can seem impossible. In the beginning, people often learn new words quickly: red! yellow! blue! one! two! three! It's fun & encouraging to learn the basics in just a short period of time.

Inevitably, however, you reach a learning plateau, when you don't feel like you're advancing in your language abilities. After all that success in the beginning, it's frustrating to reach this stage, & many understandably give up when they find themselves stagnating. It's hard to push on ahead when you're walking in mud.

Even so, it's important to get daily exposure to the language you're studying, even if it doesn't seem to be producing results. A balance of active & passive exposure is best. My own language learning has a little bit of both.

Every morning, I listen to a ChinesePod lesson on my commute to work (passive), I go to the Chinese classes offered at my office (passive), I try to make small talk with my co-workers (active), & when I get home, I spend about 20 minutes practicing characters (active). In spite of all this, I feel like I've been stuck at the same level for a while now.

Sometimes the language just needs to incubate - we need to process what we know in order to move on to the next step. The harder the concepts are that you're learning, the longer it takes to process. So the more advanced you are in your language skills, the longer the learning plateau will be. But I keep at it because I know that I will eventually reach the end of this plateau - & the reward will be so worth it.

Spanish Language Book Club

A few weeks ago I discovered a Spanish language book group here in Shanghai. I contacted them & they told me where to pick up the book, which I did with astounding success.

I spent the time between then & now engrossed in a travel memoir written by a Spanish man who traveled to China in the early 1990's - when China had just opened its borders to foreign tourists. I finished reading the book the day before the book club meeting.

I was excited to join the club, not only because I loved the book & wanted to talk about it with the group, but also because I haven't had much opportunity to speak Spanish since I left Arizona, & I'm feeling a bit rusty.

When I got to the cafe, everyone was warm & welcoming. Siéntate y placticar con nosotros. We had a great discussion about the book & shared some yummy Yunnan food together. It was delightful.

At one point someone asked me where I was from. The US - Arizona. "But have you lived in a Spanish-speaking country?" they asked. No - well, unless you consider the US a Spanish-speaking country. They were surprised & told me I have a Mexican accent. Ha! Of course, right?

But that means that all is not lost as far as my Spanish-speaking abilities. They say that one way to know that you speak a language fluently is when people stop complimenting you on your ability to speak it. No one at this book club meeting said anything about how well I spoke.

On the other hand, every time I utter anything in Chinese, people all around ooh & ah: "Your Chinese is soooo good!" It's great to have the encouragement, but it looks like I have a long way to go before I can say I'm fluent in Chinese.

What's That You Say?

When I was living in Arizona, one of the most frequent comments that people would make when they found out that I speak Spanish was "It must be nice to be able to understand what they're saying about you".

However, in all my comings & goings around Spanish speakers, I never once heard anyone I didn't know talk about me in Spanish as I waited in the line at the grocery store - or anywhere else for that matter.

Of course, I did my fair share of eavesdropping, but the conversations that I heard were almost always about mundane things - "Did you get the avocados?", "How much were the tortillas?", "Papa called & said to hurry up with the piñata." They were in their own worlds, talking about what was important to them - I didn't figure into their chit-chat.

I've been in China for a little over a year now, & I've been earnestly trying to add Chinese to my foreign-language repertoire. My current language studies include eavesdropping on other people's conversations to see how much I can understand. I spend my days surrounded by a cacophany of unintelligible language, but each day I understand just a little bit more.

The other day I noticed that I can now get the gist of what people are saying - for the most part. Even though I don't understand the details, I can tell if someone is talking about their plans for the weekend or what they had for lunch. & surprisingly, I've started to hear other people talking about me.

I often notice people noticing me. I'm a foreigner here & people are amazed by that. When I step on the subway, people often do a double-take then quickly look away, trying not to stare. Some people take photos of me with their cell phones, trying to make it look like they're checking their email. Children point at me & tell their parents they see a laowai, a foreigner.

All of this I've been experiencing from the start. But now that my Chinese is kind of decent, I'm also starting to hear people say things like, "Hey Zhou, look at the foreigner!" or "That foreigner sure is tall" or "I bet she's from England." Often I pretend that I don't understand, allowing myself to be the object of speculation, the mysterious white alien. It's kind of fun. My next language learning challenge will be to actually respond to their comments - in a nice way, of course.

Learning another language opens lots of doors for us. We can learn about another culture, speak to people from other countries, & get a much better understanding of the world around us. It also takes away the mystery & makes what was once alien & exotic seem terrestrial. Our fantasy version of a culture is tranformed into reality - a reality where we're not so different from each other after all.

Finding My Way

I recently came across a Spanish langauge book group in Shanghai & contacted them to get more information. The organizer said their next meeting was in a couple of weeks, & that the book was available at a copy shop on such-&-such road next to so-&-so restaurant.

So the other night I went in search of said copy shop. When I got to such-&-such road, I couldn't find the so-&-so restaurant, so I started looking in store windows for what might be a copy shop.

Mind you, copy shops in China do not in any way look like copy shops in the US. In the US, I would look for something like this:

In China, it looks more like this:

You gotta know what you're looking for.

After a couple of passes up & down the short street, I finally found a copy shop & ducked inside. Squeezed in among the piles of boxes on one side & a couple of boisterous children on the other, I asked the proprietor for the 西班牙语的读书俱乐部的书, the Spanish book club book. He had no idea what I was talking about. Hm.

I asked if there was another copy shop nearby & the man pointed me down the street & around the corner. Off I went. I found the second copy shop & asked for the same Spanish book club book. I had the right place! I got my book, paid my 50 RMB (about US $7.60), & left the shop feeling a bit giddy.

This would never have happened a year ago. Not only would I not have been able to communicate what I needed in Chinese, but I wouldn't have been able to find the first copy shop at all because I would have been looking for a Kinkos. But now, although I'm still floundering as I roam around Shanghai, I experience tiny successes like this, & it makes it all worth the effort.

Compulsory Chinese

So far, I've been keeping up with my New Years Resolution #1, to study Chinese with more focus. I've been posting lessons every day on my website Language in Real Life, as well as regularly posting my writing on Lang-8. & I still meet with my language exchange partner once a week to study Chinese & Spanish together.

Last week at work, we got an email from the boss: Since we work in the language learning field, everyone has to study & improve their second language (be it Chinese or English), & we have to do it during work hours. Sweet! I'm getting paid to learn Chinese! Is my job great or what?

I agree with my boss that being a language student gives you a perspective on teaching a language that being bilingual just doesn't give you. If you can speak two langauges fluently, you're no longer a language learner but a language speaker, so your learner empathy is muted.

As a Spanish teacher, I think I lost sight of the struggles, joys & frustrations of learning a language. But now that I'm learning Chinese, I am reminded of what it's like to be a language student. I am able to take my successes & failures in my own learning & apply them to the lessons that I'm writing for English learners, thereby using class time in a much more productive way.

I'm so glad that I've found a job where I can make these kinds of discoveries, where my boss encourages my hobbies & my co-workers actually enjoy shooting the breeze about language structures. Now if only I can get them to let me work remotely (New Years Resolution #2).

Language in Real Life

As part of my New Years Resolution #1, I've created a new website dedicated to langauge learning called Language in Real Life.

Right now I'm focusing on Chinese since that's what I'm studying, but eventually I would like to expand the site to other languages as well. That might mean traveling to other countries to collect realia or turning the site into a wiki so that other people can contribute...

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The idea at Language in Real Life is to use real-life examples of language (or “realia”, as we say in the biz), like the one pictured here, as a basis for a lesson. To help keep myself on task, I aim to post a new lesson every day.

Each lesson starts with a photo of a road sign, billboard, restaurant menu, magazine ad, or any other realia available. I include the Chinese characters, the pinyin transcription, a vocabulary list, & a translation of the text into English, along with occasional cultural notes.

Lastly, there is a writing assignment to complete that uses the vocabulary from the realia, which people can answer in the comments below the lesson. I'm also posting my own answer to the writing assignment on Lang-8, a really cool language learning community which I've posted about before.

Of course the Language in Real Life site sprang from my own language learning project, as a way to motivate myself to stick to studying, but I'm hoping that other people will use the site too. If you or someone you know is studying Chinese, or if you've always wanted to pick it up but never got a round to it, take a look, see what you think, & let me know your thoughts.

How to Be a Language Learning Role Model

I've just written a new post on the GO! Overseas blog about being a language learning role model for your students. Here's a quick peak:

In China, students see teachers as experts in their field, even if it’s obvious that they’re not. Many of my students tell me that their English teachers in high school told them to say X. Now I’m telling them to say Y, and they have a hard time reconciling the two, because even though their high school teacher is a non-native speaker, he or she is still a teacher – an expert. But you are an expert too, and most days what you say will trump any previous expert’s advice.

If you'd like to read the rest of the post & learn more about how teachers can motivate language students to study more, click here.

Learning a Language with Lang-8

I just discovered a great language learning tool!

Lang-8 is a cool website where you can post your writing in the language that you're learning (whatever it is), & native-speaking members will make corrections for you. The best part is that it's totally FREE!

I've been writing on Lang-8 for a couple of weeks now, both in Chinese & Spanish, & have gotten a lot of great feedback from other members on the site, which I can use when I'm writing future entries. If you're curious, you can see what I've been writing here.

It's a lot of fun to try to write something in Chinese. It helps me step out just beyond my comfort zone, which is important for language learning. & I get almost immediate feedback on what I write, when it's still fresh in my mind.

It's also interesting to be writing in Spanish after almost a year & a half away from it. I miss speaking Spanish, & it's interesting to see the mistakes I'm making now. This is a great way to get back to using the language on a daily basis while interacting with native speakers again.

You may be thinking, "I wouldn't know what to write." Don't worry - you can write anything you want. Even if you just write something short, like what you had for breakfast, it's fine - & people will correct you!

You might try writing something as long as a college essay if you're so inclined. However, I've found that I prefer to read & make corrections on other people's writing when it's shorter. It's much easier & more interesting for me to manage a short writing than trying to read a long essay.

But really, it doesn't matter what you write, just that you're writing in the language that you're studying. It's up to you how you practice.

Here's my entry on Halloween in Chinese:

Once it's posted, other members on the site will read & correct it - for FREE! Sometimes there are differences of opinion, so more than one person will post a correction, which helps you understand even more how the language works.

It looks like I made a few mistakes on this one. The corrections are here in red.

Of course, it's a community of language learners, so you can pay back those that help you by making corrections on whatever they write in English. You might even make some friends while you're at it. I've already "friended" several people who live in Shanghai through the website. Maybe one day soon we can get together for a face-to-face language exchange.

Go try it & tell me what you think!

(By the way, I don't work for Lang-8, nor do I get any compensation for saying how awesome they are.)

Woman Wandering Solo: Linda Redman

Women Wandering Solo is a series of guest posts that inform & encourage women who don't have travel partners to take a solo trip instead. There are so many amazing places to see in the world, & experiencing them solo could wind up being the best way to do it. To learn how you can share your own story with us, click here.

Another option for traveling solo

Linda Redman lives in Phoenix, Arizona. She has traveled all over the world - both solo & with friends - to places like Costa Rica, Morocco, & India. Here she recommends combining solo travel with an education.

As my friends well know, I am an avid traveler and am constantly exploring new corners of the world (although my real passion is exploring the countries of Latin America). I have been fortunate in being able to share my explorations of the world with my husband as well as with close female friends. As a result my solo traveling has been more limited.

There is one avenue, however, which I would encourage women wandering solo to consider if they are worried about striking out on their own in unknown territory for the first time: enroll in a language school or a volunteer program in a location you want to explore.

While I have opted to do this as part of my ongoing effort to learn Spanish, I have also found it to be a great way to strike out on my own in locales that I have never visited before. While the volunteering option would be more practical if one already had a basic knowledge of the native language, the language school option is viable for all levels (beginners to advanced students of the language).

What this approach to travel offers

• Provides an more secure context initially within which to begin your exploration of a new country

• Allows you the freedom to strike off on your own (when not in class and on the weekends)

• Provides you with an easy avenue for meeting other interesting people

• Increases your understanding and appreciation of the local culture, affording you a view of life beyond that of a tourist

• Provides you with a knowledgeable resource on local activities and sites as well as frequently offers you the opportunities to go on school-sponsored cultural excursions to places you may not go on your own (e.g., eating at the night market, visiting a woman’s weaving co-op, taking a cooking class)

Choosing a language school

While you want to pick an area which interests you, your options will be somewhat limited by the availability of a school. Generally, the larger cities or towns will offer several options to select from. However, in some cases I have found opportunities in smaller rural communities as well.

There are all types of language schools, and you will need to decide what type will best meet your needs. For example, there are large schools (75 to 100 students) and small schools (10 to 25 students). Some have structured classes in small groups, and others offer private lessons. Some schools cater more to college students (especially if located near a beach), while others (generally smaller-sized schools) seek out the independent travelers with a mix of ages.

The time of year can also change the nature of the schools. Schools tend to be full during the summer months. While this means there may be extra activities offered and a greater array of students with whom to form friendships, it can also mean a more chaotic environment and the use of second string teachers.

All the schools offer the opportunities for home stays and I would highly recommend this as another way to further get to know the local culture. However, this experience can also vary. I have had good and bad home stays – ones that have seen me as simply a paying boarder and others who have welcomed me into their home as a guest.

Other alternatives which I have also tried and would recommend include renting an apartment through the school (shopping for food in the local market and cooking it at home is fun), or staying in a hotel for a few days to get a better sense of your surroundings and then staying with a family.

My favorite language school by far has been the Querétaro Language School in Querétaro, Mexico. Not only is the school great (it’s run by a young couple who were involved with the Peace Corp in Mexico - he was a volunteer and his wife ran the Spanish program from the Peace Corp), but the city is wonderful as well.

Whatever you do, before signing up with the school, ask about former students who you can email to find out more about their experience at the school. Also, talk with the school director on the phone.

Volunteering abroad

For me, finding meaningful volunteer work has been more of a challenge and has taken a lot more work than finding a good language school. One easy and potentially good avenue can be through the language school, itself. But I have also found that while a school may say that they can offer you volunteer opportunities it does not exist in reality.

The other problem I have found is that organizations which specifically offer volunteer opportunities can expect you to pay a fair amount of money for this experience, along with the fact that the setting/experience may not be all it is said to be if you start reading the reviews. As with anything, upfront leg work is needed.

However, despite the challenges, I believe that this too can be a great way to experience a country when wandering solo. I have worked for a week on an organic farm in Costa Rica which was wonderful, and in January I plan to return to Querétaro, Mexico for a month to work in a school for indigenous children.

Mini Menu

Being a vegetarian, it's sometimes difficult to find things to eat here in Shanghai. It's not the lack of vegetable dishes that makes it difficult, but rather my lack of Chinese words to describe what I eat.

There are a couple of noodle shops by my apartment that I frequent, & the staff there are familiar with my crazy vegetarian ways. They laugh when I enter, asking what I'm going to eat this time, often offering various options to me. But when I go to another part of the city, I wind up eating the same things again & again because there are only a few dishes that I know how to order.

I have recently noticed that, just as most casual restaurants in the US will serve some form of sandwich & french fries, & probably spaghetti or chicken fingers, most Chinese restaurants serve basically the same dishes.

So I decided to start keeping a notebook in my purse. Every time I discover a vegetarian dish, I take out the notebook & write down the Chinese characters as well as the pinyin (Chinese pronunciation), along with the English translation.

Now, when I go to a new restaurant, I just pull out my mini menu & flip through to the dish that I want. I ask the server if they have it - most often they do - & I soon have a tasty vegetarian meal.

What American English Sounds Like

In the first days of Hollywood films, the actors who played foreigners didn't actually have to speak the character's language. Instead they would just speak gibberish with a French or German accent & the audience would be fooled. No one spoke those langauges anyway.

Today, because this global village is so very small, those langauges are much more accessible than they were then. Many people in the US can speak two or more languages these days, so Hollywood is much more precise in its depiction of foreigners.

Still, Chinese is a language that hangs on the periphery. Other than Chinese people living in the US, it's rare to find someone who speaks Chinese as a foreign language. Most people don't really even know what Chinese sounds like beyond the stereotypical sing-song "ding dong do". If someone mimicks the sound of Chinese, they might also thrown in an "ah-so" or two.

The reason we do this is because foreign languages aren't "normal". They're not what we hear every day, so they sound strange. But to a large number of people in the world, English is the unintelligible foreign language. It's English that sounds strange.

Just what do non-English speakers hear when they listen to English? Here's a great video of an Italian pop group singing a song in gibberish meant to sound like American English. I kinda like the song. It's got a catchy beat.

Chinese Grammar

I've been studying Chinese for several years now, but mostly just as a hobby. However, since moving to Shanghai, I've been putting a lot more energy into my language studies. I can now have a simple conversation with the dumpling guy & get the maintenance man to turn the electricity back on in my apartment.

I'm even getting kudos from ChinesePod, a really cool website with great langauge learning tools.

The more Chinese I learn, the more interesting it becomes. Lately, I've started to notice a very curious but common sentence structure in Chinese. Here's an example:

这是我朋友写给我的信。zhe4 shi4 wo3 peng2 you3 xie3 gei3 wo3 de xin4.

Word-by-word translation: This is my friend write give me 's letter.

More natural translation: This is the letter that my friend wrote to (give) me.

It looks like a relative clause in English turns into an adjective clause in Chinese. Who'da thunk it?

Chinoesfera

I've been using this great website called ChinesePod as part of my language study routine. They have short ten- to fifteen-minute podcast lessons that present vocabulary & grammar points in a dialog that's often humorous as well as useful. The dialogs are simple, so they don't bog you down with lots of new information at once. This way it's much easier to remember what you've learned from day to day. Plus, it's FREE! I like free.

The other day I came across this other really cool website, Chinoesfera. It's another free podcast for learning Chinese, very similar to ChinesePod, but this one's for Spanish speakers! All the lessons are explained in Spanish, which gives me a double dose of language practice. So cool.

Deciphering Menus

One of my language learning projects has been to decipher the menu from one of the restaurants near my apartment. I've been using a great program called NJ Star to look the characters up by radical (the separate components of a Chinese character), something you can't do with a regular Chinese-English dictionary.

Sometimes all that translating doesn't get me very far. For example, I've discovered that this restaurant offers "tofu brain" (豆腐脑 dou4 fu3 nao3), as well as "old sesame copy hand" (老麻抄手 lao3 ma2 chao1 shou3). However, the other day I had a breakthrough & was able to order a yummy meal of tofu with mushrooms and a spicy cabbage dish, a delicious reward for my efforts.

10 Things I Say (Almost) Every Day in Chinese

1. ni3 hao3 你好 = hello
2. mei3 shi4 ka1 fei1 美式咖啡 = American style coffee
3. re4 de 热的 = hot
4. yi1 dian3 tang2一点儿糖 = a little sugar
5. wu3 jiao3 chang3 五角场 = five angle area
6. zhe4 li3 hao3 de 这里好的 = here’s good
7. fa1 piao4 发票 = receipt
8. xie4 xie4 谢谢 = thank you
9. wo3 e4 si3 le! 我饿死了 = I’m starving!
10.ting1 bu4 dong3 听不懂 = I don’t understand

English Corner

A Chinese student invited me to join him & his friends for English Corner. They meet every Friday evening for a couple of hours of English practice. This time, they had prepared a warm up of tongue twisters ("Betty & Bob brought back blue balloons from the big bazaar"), & then we played a game of Guess My Card.

It was fun to spend time with students, but mostly I am just amazed at how dedicated they are to practicing English. I can certainly learn from their example.

Magnifying Chinese

I've been earnestly studying Chinese since I arrived here in Shanghai. Every night when I get home from work, the first thing I do is study a lesson from my Pimsleur audio program. I also have a reading textbook that I bought at the bookstore here, & once a week I attend the free Chinese lesson that my school offers. Still, it's slow going - Chinese is hard! Especially since the characters in my dictionary are so tiny - I guess my vision isn't what it used to be. So I bought a magnifying glass at the 2 kuai store. Now I can see those little buggers up close.

Me No Speak Chinese

There are millions of people living in Arizona who don't speak English. Many people who do speak English are incredulous: "How can they live in the US & not speak the language?"

As a language teacher I know that learning any language is difficult, even if you really want to learn it. But in the last several months, I have also experienced first-hand how hard it is to learn a language, even if you live in a country where it is spoken.

Not speaking the local language is pretty isolating. While I was living in Vietnam, I felt cut off from other people because I couldn't communicate with them, like there was a barbed wire fence separating me from the rich, full life beyond it.

In an effort to break down that barrier, I gave a decent effort to learning Vietnamese. However, after seven months there, I was only able to hold a basic conversation: What's your name? How old are you? Are you married yet? Believe it or not, there just weren't that many opportunities to practice the language.

I soon discovered that body language communicates an amazing amount of information. & most days it's more important just to get your point across than to speak the local language. The lady at the market doesn't want to give you a vocabulary lesson. She just wants to sell you her mangos. So you point, she types some numbers into her calculator, you give her the money, & that's that.

Here in Shanghai, it's also pretty easy to get by without speaking Chinese. Again, body language usually helps with grocery shopping & getting a cup of coffee. I'm doubling my language learning efforts, though, so I can raze the barbed wire fence & get a taste of what real life in China is like.