Austin - Capitol Exterior, Entrance Lamp / Journey into Yet ANOTHER Language, The Present

Made a bookmark out of this guy.  I'd like to develop the bookmark concept to one day be able to mass produce them for sale or giveaways.  Made about 250 so far in the small, 4" size.  Lord willing I'll print a sampling of all of these in order to choose which to produce in the larger, 5" size for distribution.  Maybe a retirement activity...
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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 07/05]
Lately we've been going through the coronavirus thing; as this is being written everyone's pretty much in lockdown, and even when we're in a place like church we're supposed to maintain a distance of at least six feet from every other family group, plus wear a mask.  Never thought I'd see anything like this in the United States.

It's the beginning of this lockdown period that will be the focus of today's entry.  For the months of March and April no one went anywhere, including my wife's sisters and their families.  Which means that we didn't see them or visit for an unprecedented two months.  Then we all relaxed a little and chanced a visit some weekends.

When regular visits resumed, something hit me like a ton of bricks...something I'd become inured to over a marriage of three decades.  Naturally all of my in-laws are full-blooded Chinese, and a very close family, so speak Mandarin when we get together, leaving me on the outside of things.  Why not do something to better become integrated?

When this came out as a discussion between the wife and myself it was determined that I should make one last push to grow and polish my skills at speaking the language.  This I agreed to do, and we came up with a plan.  I already know enough to have a rudimentary conversation, so starting from there we've determined to speak nothing but Chinese from the time we get out of bed until logging on for work.  This is upwards of an hour, and includes breakfast time, our morning walk, and/or a lesson from YouTube (found a pretty good series for free).  The result of this has been that our walks are a little quieter than they used to be, but I was pleased the other day that we successfully had an argument about which sidewalk to take at a turnoff in the park.  And the day that I can successfully tell a joke will be a threshold.

So here we are.  I'm almost 62 years old, and have found another good retirement/old-age hobby to keep the ole' synapses firing. (the other ones being photography and flight simulation)  Though I don't foresee matching my fluency in Spanish, this is the one that counts the most!