Corpus Christi - Houston - Toronto - Beijing

Sitting on my Air Canada flight from Toronto to Beijing reminded me of how much Chinese I really don't know. I sat down next to two Chinese businessmen. About 3 hours into the flight I gathered the courage to ask them if they were from Beijing (in Chinese). I really have no idea what the reply was...
I seem to have no problem being able to make myself understood, but my ability to interpret what people are saying in Chinese in return is dismal.

It reminded me of the mistakes I've made in the past. i.e:

1. Instead of asking for a bunch of bananas (xiāng jiāo - 香蕉) I accidentally asked for a bunch of pandas (xióng māo - 熊猫).
   And vice-versa when I asked for the Banana Fuwa instead of the Panda Fuwa. or ??
2. For about 6 months I asked for taxi drivers to take me to Frog University (Qingwa Daxue), instead of Tsinghua University (Qinghua Daxue).
3. I'm pretty sure the entire year I've been asking for a bowl of tampons (I read in the Lonely Planet Chinese Language Guide that it was miantiao), instead of a bowl of noodles (miantiao, different tones)
4. I'm sure there are many more that I don't know about!

Booooooooring

But I ended up having about 5 gin and tonics. Noice.

2008 Beijing Olympics

I'm leaving tomorrow.

I'm rather excited. I don't know how much Beijing would have changed in over a month.

I left Beijing on June 25th. I've been travelling around South East Asia for 3 weeks and then relaxing in Texas for 2. The last two were necessary to get my tourist visa fixed up.

The year previous I had been learning Chinese at Tsinghua University. My Chinese is still pretty crappy, but I can get by.

I will let everyone know the changes in Beijing and how the Olympics goes.

P.S. Aoyunhui (奥运会) means Olympics in Chinese. It is actually shortened from: Àolínpǐkè yùndònghuì = 奥林匹克运动会. The first word is obviously a chinesified version of Olympics and the second word means "sports competition".