我的牙痛 (The story of my toothache)

我一个星期前在昆明到了。我的招待所很方便，附近有很多饭店，商店，酒吧，等等。恐怕，在夜里声音很打。所以我睡了不好。

上个星期天我的牙痛开始。疼痛一天比一天打。星期四我去看了牙医。他发生没有毛病。

次天我去药房。他们给我中药，我也买泰诺和布洛芬。中药和西药，没事儿！

星期六我去看龙门石窟。我觉得很有意思，也很漂亮。但是牙还痛所以我没高兴。

今天是星期天，牙痛开始七天前。今天比较好，我觉得中药越来越灵。

This is the story of my toothache, hopefully it will have a happy ending.

I happened across these interesting Chinese proverbs:

"抱薪救火" (bao xin jiu huo) - To carry firewood to put out a fire - to make a problem worse by inappropriate action.

"挖肉不疮" (wa rou bu chuang) - To cut flesh to cover a sore = to make a problem worse by applying a short-term fix, ignoring the long-term problem.

"江河日下" (jiang he ri xia) - Rivers pour away by the day = going from bad to worse.

To really learn Chinese you have to learn a whole bunch of these.  You can then litter your speech with them and impress everyone with your eloquence.   Or so I'm told.  It was hard enough today for me to learn the Chinese for "Star Trek: Into Darkness".  (Which for the record is "星际迷航：暗黑无界" - "xing ji mi hang: an hei wu jie" - and I pulled it off magnificently.  Also thank God it was in English with Chinese subtitles and not dubbed, the 3D IMAX experience gave me enough of a headache as is.)