When I was in school, I was a good student; partly because I was motivated to learn, but mostly because my parents put the fear of God in me if I brought home anything lower than a B.
Some subjects stuck, other topics, I just memorized to get a good grade; then as soon as the test was over, I immediately forgot the information. When I went off to college, the balance changed a bit – I became more interested in the subject matter, but fear was still a good motivator.
Since moving to China, you would think that navigating the language is one of my biggest challenges. And, trust me, Chinese is a tough language to learn. But an unexpected challenge has been navigating the units of measure – a lesson I really should have paid more attention to in school!
Like most of the world, China uses the metric system – meters, grams and liters instead of feet, pounds and cups. Surprisingly, trying to switch my brain to these measures impacts my world daily – sometimes even more than the language.
For example, a few weeks after we moved, I decided to give the family a little boost and make cinnamon rolls; nothing says ‘everything will be OK’ like cinnamon rolls. So, I bought some measuring cups, since our personal items hadn’t arrived yet, all the ingredients, a bowl and downloaded a recipe off the Internet. Simple, right?
As I started, it became increasingly clear that my cinnamon rolls weren’t going to turn out well. The measuring cups were all in deciliters, while the recipe called for cups. The measuring spoons were in milliliters, but the recipe was asking for tablespoons and teaspoons. I even had to struggle to figure out what temperature to set the oven to, because my oven dial is in Celsius. Needless to say, the cinnamon rolls were awful.
And this was just the beginning of my missteps, all because I didn’t internalize that metric unit in math class! I’ve bought way too much eggplant and not enough fish because I overlooked weights, which were in grams – that meal wasn’t a winner either:). I’ve turned our thermostat up way to high because it too is in Celsius. And, I’ve been late to outings because I decided to walk a distance that I should have driven to.
The experience of living in a ‘metric world’ has reminded me how important it is to really learn important things and not just memorize them. Luckily, as I get older, and get to choose what I learn, I’m trying my best to internalize information, and not just get out with an “A”.
As for the metric system, I’ve since downloaded an app to help me with all of the conversions. Unfortunately, I still haven’t learned them, but I’m going to try :).
(Star) Transition 