carl.hops

Only time and good science will tell, lets wait and see!!

Free flashcards with Anki: http://ichi2.net/anki/ You can download decks people have already created.

Haven't got the book my self but the first 4 pages look promising and I've actually used them for teaching advanced English. "A year in the life of an ESL student" teaches idioms, phrases and slang. In an interesting way, with worksheets every 3 pages of story/dialogue. I currently teach at a "training school" for Children, I don't have a degree and I started with no experience teaching Children, that and because the school is a start up (by a foreigner and a his Chinese wife) I'm taking a hit on salary so I can learn something about teaching from the guy, which has paid off. I make 4000RMB base salary, and 70RMB for every class taught over 20 a month. I'm not rich here, but I'm not poor either, I could definitely be making more if I freelanced or even found a different training school but like chengdu4me said they don't care if you can teach or not and they definitely aren't going to be able to teach you anything. Take his advice. Not to hijack your thread but, I may be moving to Chengdu in September. Tianjin was interesting while it lasted :-) I guess I should also add that my visa was paid for as well as my trip to HK, I don't have any contractual obligations and I only have one class to teach (but I do have to stay for 8 hours a day, which consists of me taking advantage of their high speed internet otherwise I might fight that)

I guess transfering money to my bank account in the u.s. might mean I'm traveling, really its only for a relative who plans to buy something for me off craigslist. I guess the fifst chance I get to go home I'll take a money belt. I know the TSA in portland, and the customes officers. Shouldnt have problems as long as I stay within the limits. As sad as this might sound, I've never seen an american citizen put into secondary and searched or asked about how much cash he had. ;-) but I do remember staying for hours for them to release indians, arabs and chinese.

:-) why are you all assuming I'm going back? I guess I'll just deal with the fee's, unless western union turns out to be cheaper.

We're looking for the best way to transfer RMB from my Chinese bank account to my bank in the u.s. (USD). We went to the bank yesterday and were told to come back in the wee early morning, it would cost 140 RMB to transfer about 8,000. And my bank will charge me for the transfer as well. (have yet to ask them how much). Is there a better way to do this? One lest costly and time consuming?

I've been waiting for the iPhone version, its a fantastic dictionary.

The best IME I've used is googles pinyin IME. It predicts with a lot more accuracy what character your going for next than the others out there.

Thanks, I like livemocha, italki.com is good as well.

Unsafe? Not if you have the right security.

Amazing stuff, the only exciting thing that happened to me this week was the traffic accident I most likely was at fault for

Amazing, keep us updated Tony. I'd like to learn from your experience if I can. Were still thinking about this carefully, if we were to start up a business it will be in her hometown.

Thanks everyone, I guess I'll have to stick with youtube. I have witopia and hotspot shield. I use both when one isn't working so well. :-)

Anyone out there know a good source for Chinese music videos with pinyin subtitles? I need to improve my KTV skills. Sorry for the English, on my work computer.

Not to me at least. It looks like foe, not fuh, so I say foe. You definitely should, unless they have the tone mark above the O (they usually don't).

I flew from Korea to Tianjin with Asiana, service was great and food wasn't bad.

Wish they would start driving safely as well.

Yakun likes to change the air also, I'm always quick to close the window after 10-15 minutes of that. The little A/C gets kicked on and its only another 15 or so minutes until the bedroom is hot again so its not much of a problem.

Pho sounds like fuh phonetically. Have you seen any restaurants out there with the name "What the Pho?"

I've been looking for a nice t.v. show in Chinese to watch. I'll try looking for it with xun lei.

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Thanks Jin for the input, maybe this is why you don't find much sauce on the pizza's here. Another type of place I've been considering is a Mexican style restaurant, need to do a bit more research on that end though. We will be hosting a monthly English corner & dinner party starting November, then bi-weekly at our apartment (the college I attended here will tell their students about it, I know the person who organizes it). Other Chinese interested will be invited as well and all the foreign English speaking friends I know, the English and Foreigners is to get them in the door. We will serve pizza and Mexican dishes, do a survey and network. Perhaps we can even find some investors. The cost of the food will be split between everyone at the door, we will put in some Chinese food, and serve small portions of the foreign food if need be to keep the cost down but I doubt money will be an issue if we have different people every month/week. I'm guessing it will be something like 10 maybe 20 rmb a person depending on what were making. There are quite a lot of pizza places here in Tianjin, they all seem to be doing well. But none offer a tasty and cheap pizza, and none offer selling it by the slice so there is a niche unfilled. We'll see what the locals think.

As another concern, will your Chinese be good enough to manage a restaurant? Otherwise, would it be possible in Tianjin to find Chinese people with reasonably good English who would work in a pizza shop? If neither of these prospects are good then your wife might end up with a lot more responsibility than she anticipated. If your Chinese is great then just disregard this comment. On the speaking side of things I'm becoming more capable every day, in two years when we are ready to start this it should be good enough but I plan to be in there micromanaging. The reality is the level of service most Chinese are used to, and used to giving is just not on the same standard that we will be delivering and having to retrain more than several people say every 3 months (if I'm lucky to have a turn over rate like that) would be more work and head ache then it would to just do it my self. I may have to hire a few people to be waiters and I wont be able to be there all of the time so we will train, but I'm going to do most of the leg work, Yakun as well.

Thanks to everyone who's commented, you've given me a lot to think about.

Not sure if they have a common genetic thing, but I highly doubt this! Milk is everywhere.