Maria CP Week 1

My CP is from China, from a big city near Beijing. She is very young and sweet, and, as all Chinese her age, an only child. I was aware of the one-child policy implemented by the Chinese government, but actually getting to know someone who is part of it made it so much more real: no siblings. An entire generation (if not more), millions of people who have grown up without a little brother or big sister; nobody between you and your parents, no little version of you to protect (or make fun of). And in school, classroom after classroom full of only-children. That has got to affect society somehow.

But returning to my CP. She is very keen on learning English and told me that when she first arrived to the States she could not utter a single sentence. That was five weeks ago. She had to spend sometime at the airport in Detroit, waiting for her connecting flight to Tallahassee, and was unable to make the people working at the airport understand that she wanted to make a phone call home to China, to tell her parents that she (their only child) had made it safe and sound to America. She could not make the call and felt frustrated and worried. Now, a little over a month later, she is quite capable of communicating in a fairly eager and articulate way. Sometimes her pronunciation makes it difficult to understand her and, at times, she does say something utterly incomprehensible, but it goes by so fast that I barely have the time to register it. However, from my own language-learning experience, I know it can be very irritating to be constantly interrupted and corrected when you are seriously trying to say something, so I've been doing it sparingly, practicing instead my extensive-listening skill (?) and butting in a comprehension question here and there (If I catch it in time, that is). So far so good.