我有一点但心！

Public speaking has never been my strong point. Every time I get in front of a podium my hands start to sweat and I become twitchy and shaky. My thoughts race and my stomach feels like its about to empty its contents into the front row. I stutter, I forget things, and have incredibly long pauses during which the audience shifts uncomfortably in their seats. I hate everything about it. That's how I feel about giving speeches in English, now imagine how I must have felt when I was told I would have to give a 2 minute, completely memorized speech in Chinese to my classmates, teachers and the host parents. My thought process went something like this (perhaps with stronger language...) 'Oh-My-God. This is the kind of thing they should have warned me about before coming to China! I'm going to puke all over my Chinese teachers in the front row! Can I fake sick that day? What am I going to do? AGGGGHHHH!'
Yeah, something like that. So I started writing. I spent several hours pouring over my text books stringing together a short story/speech type thing (actually based on my last blog post) and was feeling pretty good about it. I had it almost memorized three days before the speeches where to be delivered and my host dad asked to see it. So, I stood awkwardly in the middle of our small combo living/dining room with him sitting before me ready to correct, and I started going through the speech. I didn't even make it to the middle before my dad stopped me and told me it was horrible. Not only were my tones wrong, but the story itself wasn't clear. This point blank criticism is something I have a lot of difficulty swallowing. I'm not used to having people tell me that something I worked hard on is awful, but a common trait amongst Chinese people is this sometimes painful frankness. So, wonderful, hours and hours down the drain and all I had to show for it was a crappy speech and seriously bruised ego. So, after 20 minutes hiding out in my room fuming internally about how baba had no idea what he was talking about and freaking out because I only had 3 days left to reconstruct my speech I emerged red eyed and humbled. “爸爸， 你可以帮我马？” (Dad, can you help me?) He could tell I was upset and spent an hour with me reworking the story. What came out of it was a much better story and the agreement that my baba would come watch me.
So the next three days I memorized, edited, and worked hard. I said my speech to myself riding my bike, in the shower, while running and before going to bed. By Tuesday morning I had it down. I was the 19th person on the list and as the number of people before me slowly shrank, the butterflies in my stomach grew. I wouldn't call them butterflies, more like herds of wild buffalo stampeding through. Then the 18th person finished. Oh, no. They called me up and I stumbled to the stage. My hands went clammy and my stomach twisted into knots. I got behind the podium and looked onto the 70 odd people sitting there, most of them bored out of their minds. I opened my mouth and... choked.

Just kidding! I remembered everything and even got a few laughs. My tones were pretty mediocre but I got through it with reasonable clarity and smoothness. It wasn't perfect and it certainly was not the best one, but it was the best I could have ever managed. : ) I saw my baba afterwards and he said it was, "不错。“ (not bad) That's a pretty big compliment coming from him so I was happy.

Well, now its 10:10 and I have to go rememorize the province map of China.
Until Next Time,
王芸 Wang Yun （aka Julia Loughlin）