早安你好！

Leading up to Ed's departure, we had been diligently taking Chinese lessons to brush up on my our basics and start picking up Business Chinese.

As we struggled to memorize the more technical terms as well as practise our oral reading,  I valiantly tried to apply what I had learnt much to the despair and amusement (depending on who you ask) of my colleagues. My current all time favourite phrase is "便宜没好货，好货不便宜", loosely translated as "cheap no good, good not cheap" aka quality comes at a price.

If I ever get to make a farewell speech, will definitely remember to thank them for bearing with my nonsensical spouting of Chinese one-liners which sometimes have no bearing on the conversation at all. *oh well*

Think the classic boo-boo was when I sms-ed my friend about the crab that we were eating. In a bid to level up in my Chinese conversation skills, I exaggeratedly added the following:

Friend: What are you having?
Ee: 我们在吃螃蟹，吃的津津有味。真是 触目惊心！
Friend: huh?

While I acknowledge that eating crabs shouldn't be a very startling affair, I did think that it was a good attempt nevertheless to practise what I had learnt. *hmmph*

Anyways, you would be pleased to know that after an intensive series of 2-hour lessons every other morning for a month, our 老师 actually commented that we had shown some improvement. While there were no valedictorians, we were amazed to be able to graduate with a certificate to show for all that daily morning sessions. *victory sign*

To mark this momentous moment, we dragged our 老师 for an Olympus moment:

Happy Graduates

While I might have returned most of what I had learnt to my patient and long suffering 老师, do like to think that this was a good initiation to life in Beijing. And I still have my textbook for that refresher when April (my EDD) comes around...

P.S In case I start getting funny looks, EDD = Estimated Date of Departure and not anything else!