The past few weeks have been eventful, busy, and lots of fun!

My tutor had to return to her hometown unexpectedly about three weeks ago, so for the past three weeks I haven’t been having “class.” While I continued studying my text book on my own, I didn’t have a teacher to correct my speaking and pronunciation. That bothered me. I was really afraid that after three weeks without any sort of input, my speaking and listening would seriously regress. So, I decided since I had all this extra free time on my hands, I would spend a lot of extra time with my friends, most of whom don’t speak English. That way, I would get speaking and listening practice while spending time with them.

I ended up spending almost every afternoon with my friend Rosemary, who doesn’t speak much English. Sometimes we would go places, but most of the time we just hung out at my place. She loves to cook, so she taught me how to cook some traditional dishes, which were delicious! We also discovered that we have a mutual love of spaghetti, and I that the western food store was having a huge sale and spaghetti was exceptionally cheap. Needless to say, I performed a dance of joy in the western food store! I also bought a very large amount of spaghetti! That night I taught Rosemary how to cook spaghetti and how to make spaghetti sauce from scratch. It was delicious! We had spaghetti every night for almost a week and there was much rejoicing!

Rosemary also introduced me to an old lady who has become her adopted grandmother. We call her Nai Nai. She is absolutely wonderful and I love her very much. She has basically adopted me as her granddaughter along with Rosemary. She is 78 years old and as spunky as they come! She is constantly laughing uproariously at her hilarious puns and jokes (which I currently don’t understand, but we won’t tell her that). We often go to a tea house and drink tea with her for several hours. She also has a great love for chicken feet and she orders them every time we meet. If I can get past the mental block, the chicken feet are actually delicious. It is very much mind over matter and I am slowly learning to like them.

All in all, the past several weeks have been very good. Even though my teacher has been away, my language has still improved a lot! I have become very close friends with Rosemary, learned to cook some new dishes, and eaten a shameful amount of spaghetti! I also have a new grandma, which is just wonderful! God is good, and life is good!