Living in Chinese

I never realized how different life would have been if I had succeeded in digging all the way to China.  The language barrier alone would have been enough for me to dive right beck into the hole and crawl home as fast as possible. I've come to this realization recently as my two roommates and I have been adjusting to life with a Chinese roommate.  Wei Yingchi, or as we call her Phoenix, is one of the kindest, most courteous people I have ever met.  She has filled our room and our lives with an unexpected yet distinct flavor of cultural respect and understanding.  Perhaps in another Post I'll go into greater detail about the numerous small changes that continue to develop since Phoenix moved in, but my favorite so far is the constant stream of rapid Mandarin Chinese that constantly cascades form her corner desk.  At first we were all rather annoyed with the rapid fire of strange sounds and inflections emanating from the far corner of our common room, but we've begun to adjust.  For me the low din of Phoenix video-chatting with her mother (and other family members) has become a sort of background babble for my everyday doings.  I'm beginning to see the beauty (without an ounce of denotational understanding) in the mercurial, guttural emphasis and the alternating, rythimicly light stroke of articulation in the spoken Chinese word. Every sentence sounds like a line of alien poetry.

And when I can't take the foreign chatter anymore I turn my headphones up too loud and blast my current musical obsession. As I'm writing this, I'm listening to The Frames --> check them out!


<iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/CWZjz9PJxiI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

sorry, I tried to post a video but it didn't work, here's the link:

http://youtu.be/CWZjz9PJxiI