Wednesday, March 11, 2009

138

Yesterday was a pretty normal day. I went to Ky Quang in the morning, then had Vietnamese lessons in the afternoon. My actual teacher showed up this time and I am so happy she did because she was a fantastic teacher.

Pic: Jack at Ky Quang
Instead of trying to teach me phrases like "good afternoon" and "what's your name", which are important to know but not essential, and the alphabet, which is really involved and has lots of exceptions to rules and letters have different sounds when combined with other letters, she decided to teach me something basic and useful. I learned how to say every number through one million and how to say "how much does this cost" and "that's too much". She would say the number in Vietnamese and have me repeat it until I said it right, then she helped me come up with ways to remember the numbers in Vietnamese relative to the way they sound in English( like eight in Vietnamese is Tam, so I remember it by the T in eighT, and Bay means 7, so I think of Buy 7, things like that). Then she would switch back and forth between saying numbers in English and Vietnamese and I would have to translate them. Then she taught me how to say 10, 100, and 1000 and wrote down complicated numbers for me to say in Vietnamese. After an hour I had them down, and I use them all the time so I am getting faster at thinking of them in the moment.

1  Mot
2  Hai
3  Ba
4  Bon
5  Nam
6  Sau
7  Bay
8  Tam
9  Chin
10  Muoi
100  Tram
1000 Nghin
1000000  Trieu

123,480 would be "mot tram, hai muoi ba nghin, bon tram tam muoi"

In the evening I went for a run then showered and went bowling with Cronin (Ireland), Niko, Emma, and Mikaela. It was fairly expensive, about 3 US dollars a game, but we had fun so it was worth it. Niko and I tied for the highest score at 138.

Pics: 1. The Bowling Squad. 2. Emma and I. 3. Sweet kicks Cronin- they barely fit us cause our feet are so big.



Wednesday I am playing soccer with the Green Bamboo Shelter from 12-3 so should be a good day!

4 comments:

  1. Is that a Brookline, MA t-shirt on that kid? And 5 is actually pronounced "biz"

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Jeremy - Great blog! Occupational therapy just might be in your future. Or not!

    ReplyDelete
  3. haha, not a brookline shirt, but he did live in boston for a bit...

    ReplyDelete
  4. haha, don't know if i could do this for the rest of my life arlene, it is really draining. but i do enjoy it!

    ReplyDelete