Un Jour de Chinois

Or Rather, "A Chinese Day"
When I stepped out of my front door, I walked smack into a Chinese New Year's parade. I mean that literally, as in, I took one step out of my door and my foot got trampled on by someone in the parade. It was pretty impressive, the outfits were so colorful.

Firecrackers were popping like mad, creating a smoke that held up the parade a bit. Check out the cymbal player on the right - he turned away from the smoke and noise.

I swam the crowd upstream and watched as they rounded my corner.

They squeezed eastwards down my block.....

The crowd in tow....

and slowly disappeared...

only to reappear a few hours later, swollen and loud, bringing a halt to rue Beaubourg.

The colors were as deafening as the firecrackers, which in turn, clashed with the drums and cymbals for superiority. But this was only a warm up - my Chinese Saturday was just getting started.....

Strange as it sounds, I've not been able to find a French tutor in Paris. Finding one for Mandarin proved much easier. I met her in a cafe for my first lesson - she was very professional and organized. We spent two hours on the basics of phonetics and tone, which was not easy at all. Turns out, there are four tones in Mandarin - even, rising, falling and dipping. There are also endless sounds that my American mouth aren't used to making. My jaw is sore - I'm not kidding.

I have a lot of practice to do before my next class. Funny, two hours of Mandarin put some perspective into how easy French is by comparison. I am gonna redouble my efforts to find a French tutor.