Reading Out Loud

In class, my teacher has me read Tuan Yuan, a children's book about Chinese New Year. The main character, a little girl, is excited for her dad to come for his yearly visit. She doesn't recognize him at first, but after shaving his beard and changing his clothes, she sees that he's the dad she's used to. He makes a treat for the family, hiding a coin in one of the dumplings. He says whoever bites into that particular piece will receive good luck. 

The following morning, the little girl bites into it and finds her good luck coin. She carries the coin around everywhere after that. Her dad only stays for another few days, during which time they do all the traditional and fun things that people do during the new year. The days before he leaves, the girl discovers her pocket with her lucky coin is empty! After looking everywhere all day she is devastated that she has lost her coin, even refusing to let her dad give her another one. 

Luckily, she does actually find the coin. The next day she wakes up to find her dad preparing to leave. As she hugs him goodbye, she says she wants him to have the coin and to make the special treat again on his next visit in another year.

I stand in front of the class reading this book aloud in Chinese to my classmates, the two girls nearest helping me with the characters I don't know, which admittedly, is not as many as I would have thought. We get to the page where the girl hugs her dad goodbye and suddenly I choke up. I barely finish the story without large, wet tears gathering in my eyes. 

Yes, I cry in front of the whole class. Little do I know that someone is taking pictures!

In my supervisor's class in the afternoon, he also asks me to read a paragraph. Today is just one of those days. "Hopefully ancient philosophy won't make me cry," I think to myself. This time I stumble through not understanding what I'm reading, markedly less fluent than when I read the children's story. I make it through the paragraph and breathe deeply. 

I need to work on reading out loud in Chinese.