Chinese is hard!

Tonight I was feeling a little adventurous so I decided to try and learn a little Chinese. I figured I'd need to know the basics like "how much?"  "Thank you" "excuse me" I don't understand" and "I'll have...". I didn't think that'd be to hard! But man oh man, Chinese is nothing like english! the sounds they use are nothing like ours and so it takes me ten times for each phrase before I feel confident enough that if I continue to learn for 6 months I MIGHT be able to speak the language with a heavy accent. And you know what else? I'm probably learning this for nothing because I'm pretty sure most people over there know english, especially in the cities. But I want to be courteous so I'm putting myself through a little mouth torture. (No seriously....my jaw in hurting!!)

The more I think about my china trip the more I get nervous that something may happen to me. And not that I worry for myself, (I've had a great life!) but for my family. I know I sound silly  and quite morbid for worrying, but I'm just really worried my parents would see anything happening to me as a tragedy. Yes it would be sad, but I realize that I am not afraid to die. I'm at a nice point in my life where I'd LOVE to keep living, but if something happened, I'd be at peace as well. Man China is really having a strange affect on my thinking! Or maybe my morbid thoughts are from  reading And Then There Were None....hmm.

Any, I doubt anything will happen so no big deal!

oh and I almost forgot, I keep losing my URL so I'm just gonna put it on here where I know I can find it! http://jess-mytrips.blogspot.com