You don't know about my additional pythons

Things suddenly looked up for me today when I was taken in as a tutor to a sweet 7 year-old boy who grew up between NZ and China and whose parents want him to retain the bilingual capability. The people upstairs wanted in on it too so I agreed to tutor their children on Wednesday evenings as well. Although I am teaching English, I can speak Chinese to both of the mothers who have limited English capability and two of the three kids who also have a lower level of English knowledge. So with those two at least I can use Chinese to teach English in some instances. I make far beyond any job I've had in the U.S. which is nice and will also be provided with a home-cooked meal since I take a public bus to their apartment complex directly after I get out of class at 5:30. This was just the kind of arrangement I was looking for to keep my hands out of the bank account for a time, and so I can save up for a plane ticket to Changsha 长沙 and back. The home-cooked meal is the real cherry on top since the lack of decent food in my immediate surroundings has actually depressed me quite a bit. I can't help but think of food in Beijing which I think is a lot better.
Getting out today and conversing with those mothers about arrangements made me feel quite a bit more confident about my spoken Chinese. More often than not I get stuck into the rhythm of spending all my time studying, which in particular entails a lot of reading and writing exercises, and at moments like those I think about how little I must have progressed in the 2 months I've been here already. When I have the chance to go out and about however, sometimes that frustration is rapidly alleviated (and sometimes not) by actual interactions with Chinese people. Putting up with so much frustration and effort to hear people say such compliments of my ability is indeed a rewarding feeling. For instance the way the two mothers jokingly conversed between themselves about me "His pronunciation is such that he should teach our kids Chinese" or at the restaurant owned by a guy from Anhui and his wife with whom I've become acquainted, when one of their staff asked me where I was from, before I answered the wife said: "He's Chinese."
Of course all of this is nice, but I never get too caught up in it because I know very very well that to be proficient in Chinese takes worlds more than what I have now. There is always so much to learn, and I feel the digger I delve into Chinese the more fascinating, confusing, and overwhelming of a language it seems. It's interesting too from the perspective of learning Spanish in high school, a language so closely related to English, and then to study Chinese a language whose structure and grammar at times can literally be untranslatable to a significant degree. And I try to imagine what it is like to think in Chinese, what every sound and expression of body language indicates, and how it is connected with the written language which for all foreigners is like a separate language in and of itself.
I feel language really represents the way people think, and so it is fun to compare my eastern and western heritage in relation to each other, specifically now, the language difference and how that determines the way one observes the world around them. And if only all those kids I knew growing up who loved making fun of the way Chinese people speak English could see how they would look trying to live independently in China and wholly incorporate the language into their lives, they'd realize it's far far away from their comfort zone as well.