Our laoshi (teacher) told us to write about our holiday. Piece of cake ,I thought . I’ll just translate my previous blogpost on Tamansari into Chinese and I’ll be done ! But once I started I realised this was such a difficult task! It’s so darn difficult to write eloquently with my minimal vocabulary and grammar 
.
After 4 nights poring over dictionary and nciku.com, I finally submitted my draft (although deep down I know it was still poorly written, incoherent, whatever… sigh…). Laoshi notified me on grammatical errors and incorrectly used phrases, so here is the second version – that might still contain errors , proceed with caution :
放假的时候， 我和老公去他父母的家。我婆家住在马格兰，中爪哇省。
因为马格兰离日惹不太远。我就老公陪我去日惹玩儿。在爪哇，我很喜欢两个城市，一是泗水，二是日惹。 泗水是我的家乡，我当然喜欢！泗水是大城市好像雅加达，美天都塞车。但是泗水比雅加达好，因为泗水人很酷！哈哈！
日惹不是大城市，但是很有意思。在日惹文艺和教育很发达。我觉得那边的人态度特温和，很有礼貌，也很有创造力的。很多画家和艺术家住在那里。
日惹有很多漂亮的Batik，雕塑，皮影戏，银器和优雅的传动舞蹈。人说日惹是爪哇岛的灵魂。无须说，我是同意的。
我和老公去 Tamansari,以前 Tamansari 是皇室的浴场，很大也很漂亮。这个浴场是三百多年了。当时的国王录用葡萄牙建筑师设计的。
如果我们要到大门口，我们要先路过不少隧道然后我们可以看到很美大门口。
里面有三个水池，一个是国王和王子的，一个是王后，嫔妃，和公主，一个是小孩子的。
在每个水池有几个喷泉，皇家也可以用桑拿室。 在 Tamansari 洗澡应该好玩儿！我希望我是那边的公主。
日惹有更多有意思的地方。 如果你们想去那里，最好不要去十二月份或七月去，因为学生放假很多人去那边。太挤了！
Hi Sandy, very interesting posting. I wish I had learn to read and write Chinese. I understand there’s 1700 Chinese characters, and the media only use 700!
Holy Smoke! It’ll take years to lear, ha ha.
You have fun, and good translation.
Have a nice day and keep a song in your heart.
Lee.
Uncle , I think there’s more than 1700 , it’s more like 17000 haha , it’s frustrating to learn ! Sigh… luckily I’m learning the simplified chinese
WoW ….. give it a few months and you probably could start using njstar for daily conversations.
I hope so ! But I’m not using njstar, I simply change the input method on my Macbook to Chinese ^^