Chatty chat chat

Yesterday, spent most of my lunch break (wu xui) chatting with a Chinese person on Skype. I had posted a notice for language partners on the Chinesepod forum, and consequently this person got in touch.

Although my level of understanding is really terrible, I think, we were still able to keep a (typed) conversation going to and fro. I needed some help here and there. Sometimes I would recall the word or phrase, having been reminded. Mostly in pinyin (which can be confusing without the tonemarks) with occasional hanzi. When I know the characters, hanzi is more efficient, but if I don't then I am likely to be stumped.

I picked some (probably obvious) chat abbreviations. e.g. "hao d" instead of "hao de" and l for le. These words occur _a lot_ in Mandarin. Doubtless there are many more for hardcore chat heads.

Next time, we will try audio.