My Chinese Family

I met my Chinese "baba" on Sunday morning (he's the one on the far
left). He teaches PE at an elementary school, and seems to know a lot
about Taijiquan. At our first meeting, he explained (and we partially
understood) some of the philosophy behind Taijiquan. Hopefully, we
will meet today for dinner.
I realize I wasn't clear about the Great Wall - the weather on
Saturday was poor, so we went to the Opera instead. If all goes well,
this Saturday we will go instead.
I've learned most of the Harvard vocabulary; since then, the work has
become relatively easier, as I understand the entirety of sentences in
class now without needing to ask if certain words can be substituted.
However, I'm still far from fluency - if, for example, one adverb is
swapped for a different one with an identical meaning, the meaning of
the entire sentence is very hard to divine. Since Chinese is so
different from English, when I hear a new word, it's almost impossible
to tell what it means without context, and the word in question might
be the one providing the context. Nevertheless, making great progress
- I can understand far more now than I could even a week ago.