Rose, Rose, I Love You

After 37 days of waiting, my first rose "pop out" finally!! There are six seeds in this tiny tin, may God bless them all germinate successfully..

Cross Stitching Moments - 100% Happy

My students are busy these days, they "free me" from work, so I have more time to myself..

I have many semifinished items and they are all very beautiful, I put them aside when I'm busy or a bit bore... and, yes, keep buying new items even if no time to stitch them yet!

The "big projects" like this Wedding Couple(18 count) takes me... er..(lost count!!)..

At the moment I am doing a portrait with 100 colours, yes, big big project, I enjoy doing it very much as the smiling face appears more and more clearer!

I am 100% happy stitching!!

Story - 父子骑驴

I see myself in this story, haha.. I think many Asian people see themselves here too.. Hope you enjoy reading it and tell me what you see here, what you would do, if you were the father or son..


有一对父子牵着一头驴到城里卖, 路上的行人看到后, 说: "这两个人真笨, 走得那么辛苦, 怎么不骑驴呢?" 父子俩想想, 人家说得对呀! 于是, 儿子说: "父亲, 您骑驴吧!" 就这样, 爸爸骑在驴背上, 儿子牵着驴子走在前面.

走了不久, 另一群人指着父亲说: "这个父亲真残忍啊, 自己身强体壮, 竟骑在驴背上, 却叫他的小孩子在路上行走." 父亲一听, 马上对儿子说: "儿子啊, 你上来骑吧!" 于是, 儿子骑到驴背上, 父亲牵着驴子继续往前走.

过了几条街, 有人看到了, 就说: "这个年轻的小伙子真是不孝啊, 怎么让父亲在路上走, 自己却骑在驴子上呢?" 父子两人想一想 : 这样吧, 干脆我们两个人一起骑上去. 于是, 父子两人一起坐在驴子上.

他们才走了几条街, 街上的行人又说: "你看, 这对父子真残忍, 两个人竟然骑在这头细小的驴子上, 想把驴子累死啊!" 经过大家这么一讲, 父子两人竟不知道要怎么办才好. 最后, 父子两人决定用一根扁担把驴扛进城里.

What would you do if you were them?

Crash Course

My young, clever French student Xiao Lu will be leaving for Taiwan for work soon, he is so desperate to master this language quickly that he set up a "Mandarin crash course" schedule with me last week.

Xiao Lu wants to achieve his goal in just one month (in total, 14 hours of lessons), which is : to be able to communicate by speaking and to be able to read Chinese characters (which he is learning from the lessons in Traditional version!!) ... Furthermore, he told me that he is a very lazy person ---- what a challenge!!

Xiao Lu wants to learn Mandarin in the manner of learning other Western languages, that is to learn to read and write at the same time.. my experience tells me it is almost impossible to make good progress unless he would be a full time student, studying very hard each day. With such a short period of time, we should focus on Conversational Mandarin (that is, to use Pinyin only!!), so when he is in Taiwan, at least he can"survive" with his limited Mandarin.. As for characters, it should be a later step!

We teach foreigners Pinyin (phonetic writing) from the very begining because our characters don't come with spelling like other languages. Pinyin enable us to have a clear vision of the phonetic spelling, so people start speaking Mandarin very quickly... As for Chinese characters, they are made up of strokes (some quite complicated), which can be difficult to remember for the beginners, especially for western speakers. So, if you want to learn Mandarin fast, speak first, then write!

Generally speaking, people study for about 30 hours (using Pinyin) to get up to a "survival level", and then I would suggest that they learn Chinese characters.. I believe this way of learning the best as when you are able to speak some Mandarin, you are more confident and find it more interesting to learn the characters.. Initially, working on both speaking and writing at the same time will slow the speed of learning, and very often, the students are too busy (or lazy) to do the practising, so they tend to give up learning after too much struggling..

Xiao Lu does not follow my advise, he wants to grasp everything at the same time!! I suggested to him to buy the flash cards, hopefully he will carry some in his bag and will keep learning everyday..

I can foresee tough situations for him in the upcoming lessons, God bless him..

Welcome To My World

嗯... 很有意思的歌词..

Welcome to my world,
Won't you come on in,
Miracles I guess,
Still happen now and then..
Step into my heart,
Leave your cares behind,
Welcome to my world,
Built with you in mind..

Knock and the door will be opened,
Seek and you will find,
Ask and you'll be given,
The key to this world of mine..

I'll be waiting here,
With my arms unfurled,
Waiting just for you,
Welcome to my world..

My second blog

This is my second blog, the first one "left me" after I created it for just a few days, and I don't know why? Hopefully the second one will stay!!