My good friend Jin

One of the best ways to learn a language is by doing language exchanges. Basically, the way a language exchange works is: you speak English for an hour, and then you speak Mandarin for an hour.

Jin, a Shanghai native, is a former student, but now she is a friend and we usually meet up about once per week, drink coffee, and talk. I usually show up with a bunch of Chinese words I want to practice and we sneak in some English (or Shanghainese) here and there. Our exchanges are definitely lopsided towards Mandarin, but she doesn't seem to mind. As a result, she is one of the main reasons my spoken Chinese is progressing well.

This picture was taken the other day....it's been almost a month but it never gets old...GO PHILLIES!