Eureka! It happened! I finally had a breakthrough in Chinese!
On the treadmill today at the temp housing location where I’m currently staying, I was doing my slow jog as it was another 40C degree day outside (yuck!). As I’m starting to sweat, I glanced up from my iPad which was playing House of Cards (Chapter 59, I’m still working on catching up with this season … Don’t spoil it for me!) and I saw the screen for the treadmill and actually was able to read three characters I’ve never seen before in sequence (卡， 路， 里) and figured out what they mean!
OK, while just three characters might seem trivial to some people, I’m taking this as a small victory, especially as I can read them out loud! The first two characters I learned this week during my Mandarin lessons: 卡 (kǎ; card) and 路 (lù; road). The third one I only know from how I write the first syllable of my first name: 里 (lǐ; in). (When I do write my name in Chinese it’s 里奇, which is the transliteration of “Ritchie” and spoken as Lǐqí.)
So what does “card + road + in” mean to me? Absolutely nothing! Well, nothing that is unless you take it at as a face value transliteration of a English word. (Ah, notice some of that small bit of foreshadowing now carried over from the previous paragraph?) If you say kǎlùlǐ as pinyin suggests, it is very close to the word … wait for it … calorie in English! Ah! There it is! That area of the screen on the treadmill was counting the estimated number of calories I was burning while taking that slow jog and enjoying House of Cards.
With that small, yet important [for me] accomplishment under my belt, I’m following the suggestion of one of my college professors and going to grab a beer to celebrate! 服务员， 一大杯啤酒！ （Go ahead and click on the link to get the translation, courtesy of Google Translate.)