Off to Paris

24 hours from typing this post, we'll be on a plane flying to Paris, France. It has been an extremely fast 5 months in Taiwan. This last month has been challenging because I've been sick three out of the past 4 weeks with two different colds. I haven't been well enough to do as much work with Animals Taiwan and Harmony Home as I had hoped to do, but I'm very happy I got a chance to meet the people and work with two great organizations.

Talk about cutting it close, we rented out and subleased our apartment 24 hours before our flight leaves. We had three different people come and say they were interested and wanted to rent the apartment, and all flaked out on us, so we got extremely lucky today and were able to rent it our for the 6 months we will be in Paris. I thought Los Angeles had some strange, flaky people, but Taipei has even surpassed that.

As far as my Chinese, well, we went to Charlene's high school reunion party this past weekend and I was able to speak well enough to communicate with the the people there (who were "impressed" with my Chinese). I actually ended up having more fun hanging out with the kids playing with oranges and video games and let the "adults" talk about days gone by.

After studying Chinese for 6 months total full time in Taiwan and 18 months on my in the USA, can I speak Chinese?

I guess the answer is yes, I can speak and read "a little" Chinese comfortably. 我會說一點中文也會看一點中國字.

Am I fluent in Chinese?

Absolutely not, I'm lucky if I can carry on a conversation, but luckily being the creative person I am, I can figure out a way to communicate most things with the limited language skills at my disposal.

French?

Well I've been studying French on my own for the past 3 months using the Fluenz DVD course French 1, that I completed today.

Pas de probleme, je parle un peu Francais. Au revoir, demian Paris!!!