User Comments - abelle

Posted on: Toothache

Hi, Pretzellogic: Unfortunately my school was not that flexible and we had to wait a month to get a teacher who speaks excellent English. I think my previous teacher would be fine for advanced students who mostly want to engage in dialogue on topics like economics, world affairs, culture, etc. and who already knew grammar and plenty of vocabulary.

But for beginners like me who needed a lot of explanation, the situation wasn't beneficial at all.

Posted on: 一...就... (yī...jiù...) pattern

Ni hao:  I am struggling with this sentence in my exercise workbook to turn it into an 一...就... (yī...jiù...) sentence:

那个地方很进，　很快就走到了。

I was thinking of writing this answer:

我们那个地方一走，　就到了。

Anyone out there with suggestions?

Xie xie.  --abelle

Posted on: Toothache

I agree with you, fcollins! I too enjoyed listening to lidilu. One of the frustrations I have encountered studying Chinese in a classroom setting here in the US is that some of the teachers don't know English well enough to explain grammar and other complicated topics to beginning students. And we don't know enough Chinese to ask the right questions sometimes. So when there is a Chinese teacher who can explain and answer our questions clearly in English like lidilu, she's a gem!

Posted on: Toothache

After Thanksgiving activities and starting my Christmas shopping for the past few days, I finally got around to listening to this and got the full picture about dentists in China. The friend who hosted the Thanksgiving dinner we attended told me that he was in Beijing about a month or two ago for a few days as part of a business trip which also included Australia. Boy, was I jealous to hear that! Besides the Beijing part, have never been to Australia and that's one place I've always wanted to visit.

BTW, our family dentist's name is Dr. Savage. We joke that it's a terrible name for a dentist, but we like his practice and have been going there for 15 years.

Posted on: The 着 (zhe) Chronicles: How We Verb

Thank you for this lesson.  We covered 着 in the grammar portion of our class  recently and it's good to get additional examples and explanations.  Now I have to get used to using it when I am doing the writing exercises.

Posted on: Toothache

So in China the dentists are located at hospitals?  In the US, dentists are completely separate from the hospitals, they have their own offices, and that's where we go for all necessary procedures.

Posted on: Thanksgiving

Xie xie!  Thanks so much for this lesson!  Our teacher gave us an assignment with a very short deadline: to write a 5-minute presentation (in Chinese, of course) about the history of Thanksgiving and our plans for the holiday.  I was happy to find that this lesson had the vocabulary words I needed, do I didn't have to spend time searching for them.  It was challenging enough to translate the Thanksgiving story from English into Chinese. Thank you for helping me out, ChinesePod!

Posted on: What does she look like?

BTW, I and my Filipino relatives have double lids which gives us larger eyes than other Asians. (No surgery needed there.) My mother claims it is due to our supposed Spanish ancestry! However, we still have the flat noses :-). No one in my family (yet) has had surgery for that characteristic.

Posted on: What does she look like?

I watched that documentary early this year and it inspired me to have my DNA tested ($100) by a lab in Texas which does this testing for National Geographic. The test is done through the maternal line and is very general. The test results told me that my mother's ancestors came from Africa (as all of ours did) and went through the Middle East, Pakistan, India, Burma, Thailand, and finally Malaysia. As I was born in the Philippines, I figured that some of my ancestors sailed from Malaysia to the Philippines at some point. I suspect my father's ancestors took the same route also. A few months after my results came back, my husband took the same test and didn't get any surprises. His ancestors came from Africa through Syria, Turkey and into Eastern Europe. As his family came from the Polish-East German area before immigrating to the US, this makes sense. It was all very interesting. My mother claims that her family has Spanish blood (her maiden name is Spanish), but I guess that would take a much more expensive and detailed test to break down the various ethnic groups in someone's genetic makeup.

Posted on: Revisiting Before and After

Well, today I received a new Chinese surname, also Hé​, but with the character 何. I received the first surname from a teacher originally from Taiwan. My current teacher, originally from Harbin, said 和 is not really a surname, so she gave me the new character. Next quarter I will be getting another teacher from Taiwan and who knows, maybe she will change my Chinese surname too!