I Will Beat You At Charades

Chinese is really hard. We have been working on it (intermittently) since we got here last August. I would estimate that we probably have the vocabulary of 3 year olds at this point.

We do have a few specialized areas where we are slightly more advanced... Ask Heather how to order any of a multitude of Taiwanese teas and she will accurately hook you up. Ask me what a particular item is on a Chinese menu and I'll be happy to tell you. (although, if the dish does not contain one of the 6 characters I recognize, my response will be fabricated, and you will most likely not get what you wanted.)

At the beginning of our stay here, trying to communicate was not only utterly fruitless, but also semi-terrifying. Picture this hypothetical scenario:

You realize that your hair is getting a bit shaggy (read: way overdue) and you ask for a hair salon recommendation from a friend. You get it, and head to the place. You park the car, take a deep breath and rehearse the phrase you think will request a haircut. As you get close to the shop, your heart begins to beat a bit faster. You become preoccupied with concern that you will say something utterly stupid and/or completely unintelligible and be laughed at. Again. You walk through the door and are greeted by the stylist. At this point your stage fright takes over and you completely forget the sentence you just rehearsed 400 times in your head. Thinking fast, you resort to the only language you know she'll understand - International Charades. You lift your hand up next to your head and flash the peace sign. Chop those fingers together - just like scissors. Make some sort of question mark sounding grunt. The stylist understands, smiles and waves you over to a chair. Success! Have a seat and await your fate. (If you can think of a good charade maneuver for "take a little off the top." please post a comment...)

OK, truth be told, this situation is not at all hypothetical. It happened to me. Actually it's happened a bunch of times. OK, more like every day. (Not the haircut specifically, but this sort of interaction.) Sometimes it's easy. (Really, what else would the hair stylist think a shaggy haired guy want - A perm? Well maybe, but that's another topic for another post...) Sometimes it's impossible. (What maneuvers could I possibly conjure up to ask for fuel injector cleaner?)

Charades, while effective, can occasionally make you look even dumber than a few mangled syllables of attempted Chinese. I recall traveling to the airport on my trip to Hong Kong. I stepped up to the counter to pay for my shuttle bus ride and the clerk asked me something. Thinking he wanted to know where I was going and having no clue how to say "airport", I motioned with my hand the path of a plane taking off (complete with sound effects). He then repeated his question which had originally been in English. "How many people?" "Uhhhh... sorry. One person." Yep, I definitely felt like an idiot.

So having had all this practice, I would consider myself a true professional when it comes to International Charades. We are returning to the U.S. in just over a month... I challenge you to a game of making people guess phrases by acting them out. Be prepared to loose. You won't even know what hit you.