today i had my weekly "official" chinese lesson. i call it official, because i try to study every day, and when everyone speaks the language, isn't your life a learning experience?

we were going over the days of the week. a fairly simple thing in chinese--monday translates literally to week 1, tuesday, week 2, etc. the only one that doesn't follow that pattern is sunday. sunday is written as xing qi ri, or week sun. isn't that interesting.

in my classes today, i tried a new lesson plan about fables. at the beginning of the class, we go over the definition of morals and fables, and i tell them (i think) a particularly rousing version of the tortoise and the hare. after that, i have them write fables of their own in groups. in each class, on average 2 out of 8 groups wrote the story of the boy who cried wolf. it was very interesting to me, especially after one student described it as an "ancient chinese story."

now i'm not sure when xing qi ri or the boy who cried wolf was adopted, or how it came to be that both things are intergral parts of western and eastern culture. i just think it's amazing that two cultures that are so different have some very similar historical artifacts.