Cold and flu medication

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I even had a headphone in repeating it over and over as I walked to the pharmacy. It's the same way I've learned to say water, steamed buns, goodbye, and most my counting.

 

Excellent! That's the way to do it when you aren't going the academic route. Taking advantage of times when you *need* to know something like this really works because you get immediate real-world, native-speaker feedback, you don't have to guess about whether or not it works.

 

I've found that when I say something a little wrong and a local native speaker still manages to figure it out after some head scratching, they will often say it correctly out loud without thinking about it. I try to copy that right back to them, maybe even saying it two or three times. And that is a free street-side language lesson.

 

Since you had good results from learning ganmao in context, you could probably add a few other words to that now without terribly much effort. For example:

 

medicine = 药 = yào

pharmacy = 药店 = yào diàn

pills = 药片 = yào piàn

red = 红色 = hóngsè 

blue = 蓝色 = lánsè

 

And once you think you've half-way got them down, go out and see if they really work or not. Give the stuff you're working on an immediate "trial by fire." Like sparring in martial arts; using new stuff helps retention and makes it yours for keeps.

 

Seems like you've got the right idea. Keep it up!

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KDavid -- #20 --

 

Re: Recent smog in Harbin. It started getting REALLY bad about two years ago. The past two winters were unbearable.

 

Sorry to hear that. Not a good trend. It would be a deal-breaker for me, at least as far as living there.