What’s with the name “Lao Wai Da Wei” (老外大卫)? My name is Dave, which is 大卫 (Dà Weì) in Chinese. 老外 (lǎo wài) is a slang term for foreigner. I like the cadence of this phrase, so I thought it would make a good name for a website.
I’ve always been interested in languages. In high school, I studied French and German. In college, while studying electrical engineering at Wichita State University, I met people from Vietnam. Vietnamese was my first exposure to an Asian language. I also had friends from Taiwan and started meeting the first wave of students from China and ended up taking a semester of Chinese after graduating.
I live in San Jose, California, and teach at a private Christian school sponsored by a Chinese church. This gives me a lot of contact with native Chinese speakers.
I’ve never had time to go back to school to take Chinese but studied online from Chinese Pod, Chinese Class 101, and Yoyo Chinese. I was enrolled for one quarter at DeAnza College in Cupertino, CA, and even looked into taking classes at San Jose State.
But because of the flexibility it offered, I finally opted for online instruction with italki. My teacher is in Shenzhen, China and we meet twice a week via Skype. I’ve found the one-on-one instruction has really helped me improve my Chinese! If you’d like to know more, click here to get $10 in italki credits after your first purchase.
This website will be about my learning trek and over time will add resources to help those interested in learning the language of the Middle Kingdom.
