T-Minus Five Days and Counting

I bought me a cheap, new microphone that works well, so expect to see some more videoblogs here. Yesterday's post was a my first videoblog, and I think I fell short of fullfilling the spirit of the assignment: I only stuck to very basic Lesson 1 items that I know I can do well. Maybe tomorrow I will try to talk about something more substantial, so you can *really* see how much work I have to do on my Mandarin.

So the RD of the program in Hangzhou has been sending us emails, what/what not to bring, what to expect from the language pledge, etc. One of his recommendations was to equip yourself with a PDA and PlecoDict, which IS SO COOL. It's two dictionaries on your PDA, and it breezes between listing and recognizing your English, your pinyin, or your hanzi! All students of Mandarin should equip themselves with this tool. All.

So right now I'm brainstorming some vocabulary for conversations that I know I'll have. Some topics I thought of are:

1. I have diabetes. (vocab: diabetes, blood sugar, blood test, sharps container, carbohydrates, walking...)


2. Leave Asian Americans alone! (vocab: cultural blindspot, not intuitive, ignorant ethnic majority, lack of compassion, refusing to assimilate, children of immigrants...)


3. Bush is a moron! (vocab: I did not vote for him, blue state, dishonest, un-constitutional, un-American, totally incompetent, liar, shameless, dumb cowboy idealism, simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afganistan, I marched against these wars in 2003...)


4. I'm not White people! (vocab: Filipino, fighting over milk, removing shoes at the door, fear of Spam, crimes against rice, stand-around-holding-a-beer parties, I'm not responsible for your stereotype...)

If you can think of more topics, or of more vocab from the topics listed above, please let me know.