Weekly Mandarin: 14

14th edition: Jiao

This is what Weekly Mandarin is supposed to be like... I have learned about twenty traditional characters by now, all in the greetings and introductions chapter. But I actually got to use one of them yesterday.

I stopped by my favorite tea shop (the one where the lady already knows that I want honey green tea, so instead of having me butcher "fung me liu cha," she just asks if I want one or two cups). And the shop was all lit up, but the lady was no where to be found. So I looked around and found a piece of paper with some writing on it (at which point I think... uh-oh, I can't read). But I looked down, and I recognized what it said! It had the character "jiao," which means "call." So I called out "hello!" and the lady appeared. I couldn't have been happier. Not only did I get two cups of positively ambrosial tea, I actually got to use some of the Chinese I'm learning.