Last night I went to the Super Fun Chinese Club's monthly free event. I came away with a few thoughts. First off, I'm not very fluent with common phrases. It was a bit of a struggle to go around the room and repeat, "你好。我叫Spence。你叫什么名字（use 你呢？ni nē）instead？" But those first few phrases weren't nearly as awkward as saying again and again, "很高兴认识你" or "我也很高兴认识你." （开心）you could use this word to make it feel more relax.Actually we doesn't say this phrases when we meet a new friend.Its really polite way. Did you hear a chinese met you and say nice to meet you in chinese?? There must be a simpler way to say this in Chinese. It sounds awkwardly formal to me, like saying in English, "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance." Next up, I tried to talk with 董老师 entirely in 中文 to show off my language abilities. I feel on my face in two regards: 1) I kept saying 我明白 instead of 我不明白. (An off by one error.) And 2) I couldn't recall the words for basic phrases like "How do you say X in Chinese?"(do you mean false?错cuò), "Can you please repeat that?(你可以重複吗？ní ké yǐ cóng fù mā？）" and my new favorite "Can you please try saying that in a different way?(有另外的说法吗？yǒu lìng wài de shuō fǎ mā？）" I couldn't remember any of these phrases because I haven't learned any of them. I've been learning really specialized vocabulary while neglecting the basics. The last thing that really struck me from the meeting was how even the slightest pronunciation error could make an entire sentence unintelligible. (A number of off-by-one errors.) A few examples: 1) I was trying to say, "我用三脚架固定“ (I use a tripod to fix/stabilize my phone (for filming). But instead of saying sān jiǎojià, I said sānjiǎojiù. 董老师 had no idea what I was saying. 2) I tried to say, "我每天都学习，每天都进步." (Every day I study, every day I improve.) But I said jìnjù instead of jìnbù. Again 董老师 had no clue what I was saying. 3) One of the attendees introduced himself with his Chinese name. The first syllable was lan, but he pronounced it làn instead of lán (蓝). I was trying to guess the meaning of his name, but it didn't occur to mean that the first character was actually 蓝 and he had just mispronounced it. When I was learning Spanish, we had the concept of sympathetic and non-sympathetic native speakers (basically the ones who could understand foreigners and the ones who couldn't.) I wonder how much this holds true in Chinese where there is much less exposure to non-native speakers. Would more context make me easier to understand? And am I going to have a harder time talking to native speakers in China than the Chinese teachers who live here in the US? My thought is probably yes for both. I'm not really good at english, i try my best to answer your questions. I hope i didnt misunderstand.And i think the chinese are really glad to talk with the foreigners , but we are too shy or not confident with our english! I mean some chinese.