Unexpected Perk of Start-Up Chile: Mining-Specific Chinese Vocab Lessons!

This week I learned a bunch of new vocabulary in Chinese!

挖土机 [wātǔjī] = bulldozer

港口[gǎngkǒu] = port

皮卡 [píkǎ] = pick-up truck

地形 [dìxíng] = landscape, topography

Why did I need these words? I’ve recently started doing some Chinese-Spanish translation work for mining companies. In China I worked in many different industries, but mining was not one of them. And I also did not babysit any 5-year-old boys. So I never learned the word “wātǔjī.”

Until now.

Meet Joe Yu.

Joe is entering his junior year at Middlebury College, where he is majoring in Math and Economics. He is from Shanghai, and interning for PingPigeon, a Start-Up Chile company. (Here is Joe’s post on the PingPigeon blog, with his impressions of Chile.) He has been here for a month, and today he goes back to Vermont for the beginning of the new school year.

I mentioned my new freelance projects to Joe, and asked him if he could talk to me about my photos from my mine visits, as if he were talking to a 5-year-old Chinese boy who loved big machines. Joe kindly agreed to tutor me.

Thank you Joe! Enjoy your next year of school! Glad to give you one more fun story about your time here in Chile