Progress in learning Chinese

After more than a year in China, I finally feel like my Chinese is improving. It’s taken a few months with my Chinese tutor, and I still need to devote more time to studying. But I finally feel like I’m making progress. I’ve told Eva to only speak Chinese with me for the remainder of her time at my place and I even spent much of my Saturday evening practicing with my old coworker Cheryl and another old colleague. While I feel like I’m on Chinese people overload, it’s been fun and challenging.
 
That’s not to say it hasn’t come with its embarrassing moments. Just when I told my roommate to only use Chinese with me I used a very wrong character in a text message to her. She had sent me some text message about how she needed to use the balcony to hang clothes and that she folded my clothes and put them on the table. It was not big deal to me so I just said (in Chinese) “Ok, no problem.”
 
The only “problem” with my message was my use of “ok.” There’s so many ways to say “ok” – hao de, shi de and xing are the most commonly used. Well I thought I’d use “xing” because I’m trying to use as many sayings as I can. So when I typed it in with pinyin (the phonetic spelling of Chinese characters) I just chose the first one that was there. Sine  I have used that word somewhat frequently on my phone I figured it would remember and give me the right “xing” as the first choice. Nope.
 
She sends me a message back saying something to the effect of “that ‘xing’ is not a good word.” Ut oh. So I race to my Chinese dictionary on my iPhone (that thing has paid off in China if only with the Chinese dictionary I have) and look up the word. Apparently the character I used for xing has something to do with sex. Yikes!
 
Obviously I was mortified, apologized and clarified what “xing” I had meant to use. Luckily, we’re good friends and she’s patient while I learn the language. I’m sure there will be other instances when I say something drastically wrong, but that’s been one thing that’s held me back from practicing speaking with my friends and coworkers. I really need to get over that fear. And while that little mishap definitely proved my fears, I think it helped push me a little in the right direction of getting over my personal fears of sounding like a fool in order to improve my Mandarin.