Chinese is easy to learn, right?

I have been terrible about blogging but starting now I will try to post thrice a week. I am learning so many cool things about Chinese history, culture, and language and I feel guilty for keeping it all to myself. I am a big nerd and want to spread knowledge.

比方说 (For example), we just ate homemade dumplings for dinner. There were a couple left and my host mom told my host dad to finish them off. He said 小菜一碟. The literal translation means a small plate of food. The phrase means whatever you are referring to is easy. The English equivalent is "it's a piece of cake."

I love learning slang and new vocabulary. On the first day of  class, one of my Chinese teachers said that Chinese is easy to learn. At first, I didn't believe her. If it is so easy to learn, why do I suck at it? Why is this so hard? I used to think Chinese was ridiculously 复杂 (complicated) but now I think it is quite fun. My teacher explained that many terms are logical. I like the characters for cashew which are 腰果.The first character can refer to a person's waist or small of the back. The second character means fruit. A cashew looks like the small of a person's back.

Her example was better but it isn't as interesting. Chalk in Chinese is 粉笔.The first character means powder or dust and the second character means pen. The two characters together refer to a pen that is powdery. Genius. People in my program like the phrase 熬夜 (pronounced áo yè and it sounds like oh yeah) which means stay up all night. I like 迷你裙 (mínǐ qún) which means mini skirt. The last character, 裙,means dress. Also, T恤 (T xù) is t-shirt. There are many phrases like this that were adapted from English words. 

Three things I am grateful for:
1. The opportunity to learn Chinese from everyone around me
2. Homemade dumplings-My host mom told me that the auntie is good at making them. Hopefully I will get to make some soon.
3. My Chachos tan line-I know this sounds weird but I love the crazy zigzag lines on my feet. It reminds me that I have been on many adventures. I will blog tomorrow about my recent adventures around Nanjing and our trip last weekend to Shanghai.