Day 2 of Chinese Lessons

Oy vey! I spent a few hours today with my teacher and am quite frustrated with the whole process. Nevertheless, my family is getting a few chuckles out of my mispronunciations. For example, today I was learning how to say "Do you have vegetarian food?" But instead, I mistakenly asked "Do you have any pajamas?" My cousin, teacher, and auntie were laughing quite hard. I told them "I might go hungry, but at least I'll be warm at night!" Actually, my teacher was quite concerned with my inability to say 'vegetarian food' and that I would starve, so she was thinking about having me say that phrase in a different way until I finally caught on. The reason that things can go awry in Chinese is that there are 4 tones, so 'ma' can be said 4 different ways and each has a different meaning (mā, má, ma (w/ aˇ over it), mà). Its actually not so horrible, its just taking me a while to figure things out. But I am learning things that are important to my survival in China, like "I am a vegetarian" and "What color is this?"