你好，Alycia

   First of all, I'd like to apologize for "waking up" your old thread. It's just this topic is one of my most favourite subjects in language learning. I hope you don't mind about it. Here goes nothing...

There are two stories which were quite embarrassing and yet funny that I'd like to share

Story 1
I used to have a language partner, she's Chinese. I talked to her in English when I wasn't fluent in Chinese. One day she told me about her interests and I told her that it seemed we had a lot of similarities. I said, "I'm like you." She was speechless for a while. Soon afterwards, she said something in Chinese that made my jaw dropped. She said, " I like you, too." Eventually, we found out that she misunderstood me with the sentence I am like you. Luckily, she's a woman. I couldn't imagine it if I would've said it to a man.

Ooh, sorry I am here again, apparently I have a loooooot of embarassing moments cause of my confidence level!

I was working in retail, as a part timer, and in my country, we are multi-racial. So I decided to learn to speak Mandarin by just listening and taking part in my friends' (whom mother tongue is Chinese) conversation.

So one day, it was during CNY and all my Chinese friends were on leave, so nobody else was able to speak Chinese, except me and my broken, poorly spoken Mandarin Chinese. A group of tourist were coming into the store and they only speak Mandarin, and not English.

I tried to handle a customer, and everything went well except for the end when I tried offering him a plastic bag, I said "你要面包吗?" (Ni yao mian BAO ma?---Do you want a BREAD?" instead of "你要一个包吗？" (Ni yao yi ge BAO ma? ----Do you need a bag?)

He was laughing and said, no thank you! When I realized few minutes later, I was super embarrassed by the thought of RANDOMLY OFFERING A CUSTOMER A BREAD.

p.s: To bread guy, forgive this learner! I hope your belt is still in good condition! I speak better Mandarin Chinese now! ^^