1) Chinese friend who was learning mandarin. 

She told me to ask her her name. I did. 

She giggled "Mei Li" and asked me, you know what that means? And then proceeded to tell me that it meant 'pretty'. I silently smiled and purposely remarked "bu shi méi lì meh?"(you mean no strength?) She broke into laughter as it was such an unexpected response. This is my first insult in mandarin. 

One challenge is to listen and identify the tone and match it with the word. At times, my friends don't really pronounce the "right tone" so I have to consider the context of it. 

2) Taxi uncle. 

"Wei shen me ni yao xue hua yu?" (Why you wanna learn Chinese language?) he was interested. 

"Wo you san ge yuanyin" (I have three reasons), I breezed through because I couldn't remember the tones of "yuanyin" 

Quickly mumbling words have saved me a few times even though it doesn't help my learning. So the huge challenge came when the taxi uncle started story telling. As I could understand the first two phrases, he sped up and I just sat there thinking to myself- waht????? (What) 

"Ni qu mangu yin shenme shenme?" I desperately connected the words. By using "shen me" repeatedly when I couldnt understand a part of the sentence has been another live savior. 

This 10 minutes class + transportation costed me $13 😱😱. Because he was learning Thai language, he was generous in teaching. I learnt about 10 words today.