CP #2 Alice

       Yesterday I met with Binshan, Luichang, and their friend Ariel. We played a modified version of Taboo. Essentially, we used only the cards and left the timer, buzzer, notepad, and dice in the box! We separated into two teams, and took turns acting out and guessing the words on the cards without using the Taboo words.

       Interestingly, the game turned into an impromptu vocabulary session. For instance, my team picked a card that had “spinach” as the target word. Binshan tried her hardest to provide adequate clues for Ariel and Luichang. Eventually, they guessed the word in Chinese, but did not know how to say it in English (I still gave them one point for good measure!). Once I told them what the word was in English, all three girls took out little notepads from their purses and started writing it down. Afterwards, every new word that was encountered in the game was diligently written in notepads, such as “firefighter”, “parade”, and “dock”. Two of my favorite words to explain were “mac-n-cheese” and “séance”. All of the girls agreed that they would buy a box of Kraft mac-n-cheese after I explained how wonderfully delicious it was! The word “séance” was a little harder to explain. I tried describing scenes from movies that I’ve seen, but after seeing the confused look on their faces once I mentioned things like “contacting dead people” or “talking to ghosts”, we decided to just Google the word.

       After a while, I got into the spirit of language learning as well. They were ecstatic that I took interest in learning a little Chinese, and giggled every time I tried to pronounce words like “bo cai 菠菜” (spinach) or “run nian 闰年” (Leap Year). I had so much fun yesterday. The sociologist and anthropologist side of me was completely enthused. Not only are they learning bits of American culture from me, but I am also learning bits of Chinese culture from them.