Chinese dinner - Day 1

Inspired by Seb speaking to Ariel in Spanish, Tom had newfound interest in supporting Tobey's Chinese learning by speaking at home. So we instituted Chinese at dinner time, speaking in Mandarin only for dinner.

I told Tom I think we have to make it sound fun like a game to Tobey or he won't go along with it. So when I first mentioned that we would play a game at dinner by speaking in Chinese, he at first said no (or whined or said "geekah" or such nonsense). But when I said let's try and just started, he didn't complain anymore.

In fact, although we didn't require anything more of him at dinner, he on his own, wanted to eat his (American) spaghetti with chopsticks. And when Tom was telling him the difference between a short and a long stem from the cherries, he was willing to repeat "tsang2" and "duan3" and even said, "Hey, this stem is duan!", his first Chinglish.

It wasn't as hard or as torturous an experience as I thought it would be. In fact, I was in the zone so when Tom asked when we could speak English again, I had to consciously shift gears to get out of Chinese mode. Sure, there were tons of intonation problems I'm sure and words that we could only bring in our Chinglish to explain. But we did it and will try again tomorrow.

Tom even reported that at school this morning, when Gu laoshi said good morning in Chinese, Tobey repeated back, unprompted and audible in Chinese! Tom said that had never happened before. I thought maybe the 1.5 weeks with Gong-Gong and Grandmommy did his Chinese some good.

And apparently us too.