Ni hao!

Ni hao! That's the first word that crossed my  mind when I thought about the first mandarin word which I learned when I was young.Being a Chinese who is English educated,speaking mandarin has been a major disaster to me.My mandarin was way out of the grammar and my mandarin vocabulary is not strong.It is a nightmare when any Chinese speaking girl speak to me in mandarin.Of course,I could understand what she said,but it sometimes quite troublesome if she speaks to fast or new words which is like a foreign language to me.For example,my friend spoke to me ,"Wo den ni zai shi tang".Alright,I understand almost half the sentence.wo is I,den is wait,ni is you,zai is at and shi tang.....?! What is that? Once,I asked her what she meant.Oh! shi tang means canteen.I was dumbfounded when she explained it to me.How could I not understand such as simple word!But I believe that not everyone is perfect.She may be good at mandarin but I am good at guitar.=)