Da bai ma.

So now I'm in pre-school. Actually the girls are in Chinese school (pre-school class) and I go, too. I'm speaking Mandarin at about a 3-year-old level. Actually, most of the 3 year olds in the class, including my own, are doing much better than me. But, I know my colors, a few body parts, animal names, and several descriptive words like big (da) and small (xiao). So when I go to adopt Cooper I will have no problem at all saying "small elephant head" or "big red hair", etc. I feel confident that I will be able to get my way around and communicate effectively.

The hard part about Mandarin is the tones. There are four of them and a single word can mean four different things depending on the tone you use. For example, this weekend my friend Amy and I were looking at a book about horses with our girls (four between us). I pointed out a beautiful grey horse and we talked about how it looked like the horse I grew up with. Being very proud that I know how to say "big white horse" in Mandarin, I boldly said, "Da bai ma". But instead of using the third tone I used the first tone for "ma". So while I meant to say, "big white horse", I in fact said, "big white mother". Hmmmm. Interesting.