I missed a day of listening. My scheduled filled up with things that I have to do for my upcoming trip to China! Yay! Trying to get a few more listening sessions in before the end of the Challenge.

My word of the day is 砍价，'to bargain'. I already knew the characters, but not in this combination, but it came up in a conversation with my teacher. Later on the same day, I was watching a Chinese soap opera, where one of the actors asked another to show him how to '砍价’。Now this is stuck in my brain for good.

I've decided to focus only on materials that are interesting - that I would read or watch because they deal with topics I'm interested in - mainly art and culture. I'm done with with materials designed for second language learners - no more buying stamps at the post office dialogues.

Afu is taking a German visitor to eat bull frog hot pot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxZKqbXkuxs&t=101s.

In two weeks, I'm leaving NYC to spend a month in China. All the people I'm watching and listening to for this Challenge speak so darn fast. Soon, it will be sink or swim time.

Today's new phrase is 凑热闹. Literally, "gather together, hot, stir up trouble", but is better translated as "come to see what the fuss is all about." Afu Thomas at the opening of Costco in Shanghai translates it simply as "Come to take a look."

Concentrated on Afu Thomas review of Costco opening in Shanghai. Shadowing really helps with listening comprehension - you understand and you hear EVERYTHING. This is in contrast to student comprehension where you sort of understand and are just guessing at the likeliest meaning.

I discovered a series of watercolor tutorials on Youtube, 水彩篇- 从入门到精通, with a guy who speaks deliberately and repeats a lot. He treats all his materials as if he were in a Japanese Tea Ceremony. Good for learning watercolor techniques and for Chinese.

I've added Youtube videos on painting and cooking to my listening mix. These don't come with subtitles, but because of the subject matter, they are comprehensible. I should have thought of this a long time ago - to listen things I'm interested in!

I'm using Viki.com to view Chinese soap operas. They have a dialogue repeat feature with Hanzi subtitles. It keeps repeating one line of dialogue at a time until you decide to proceed. I usually know all the characters and they are really very simple, but when spoken by the actors, half of them seem to be dropped and the other half have pronunciations that are unexpected. I'm trying to go with the flow, but it is really hard.

Finished the Ruyi Love in the Royal Palace series - all 87! It took me months. Learned the vocabulary for emperor, empress, noble consort, concubine, eunuch, and getting framed.

Listening is my weakest skill. I know grammar, I know characters, but my listening is lagging way behind. For this challenge, I will be using Afu Thomas videos, FluentU audio scripts and Chinese soap opera series (just finishing up Ruyi Love in the Royal Palace). All come with subtitles, so I listen to each with and without subtitles several times until I can follow along in Chinese associating the Chinese pronunciation with meaning.