Friday, November 03, 2006

Yesterday A moment later- the first post

I have been wanting to start a blog for some time now, mainly just for pictures, but have never up to this point been able to convince myself to do it. A recent trip to China finally pushed me over the edge. So here I am, a first time blogger, writing my first post. I'm in general pretty unsavy with the computer, internet, technology, the 21st century. . . . so please excuse any embarrassing errors.
First, the title: Because it was my last trip to China that finally convinced me to start this activity, I figured a Chinese title appropriate.
The song Yesterday Once More by The Carpenters is hugely, unfathomably popular in China. It's in every Karaoke Bar, every English Learning Curriculum, playing as background music in elevators and shopping malls, and requested on a regular basis by complete strangers I would meet ("Can you sing me an English song- How about Yesterday Once More!"). Thus the first word of my blog's name.
Now for the second part: While in China my Chinese definitely improves a bit, but maybe even more noticeable is that my English gets worse. Because a lot of the friends I have there were made while teaching at an English school, a number of them speak English to some degree and we tend to go back and forth between the two languages. In the process, I quickly find myself speaking English either wrong or in a manner that I normally wouldn't use. For example, I would usually say, "I'll be there in a minute" but most of this set of friends would say, "A moment later, I will be there". They actually use it so much that Gordon and I picked it up, first in joking with each other and eventually as means of communication with our friends. (I suppose it would be nicer of me to just let them know what more common speech might be, but being the thoughtful friend that I am, looks like I've instead opted to just laugh at them and post things about it on the internet).
Anyway, the two terms together- Yesterday and A Moment Later- coincidentally sounded like an awfully appropriate name for a blog.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hooray for Robyn on the internet!

Anonymous said...

HUZZAH!