Jeremy rubs his hair back into place with his fingers and shakes his head, stepping back some. "C'mon in. Whats up?" He asks, yawning again, then straightens his glasses back in place.

Yi clears her throat quietly, and keeps her eyes diverted down at the pizza. "I thought maybe you were intending on me to bring the materials to study English with." She notes the shoulder bag hanging off her.

Jeremy blinks his eyes, then smiles, eyes widening. "OH! Thats great. Hey, set it down." Reaching out, he takes the pizza from you, and puts it on the coffee table. He doesn't even realize how shy you are acting, its not like guys don't walk around in their boxers.

Yi ought to be used to it. Nevada and Jay and the apartment, after all. "Eh, ya," she nods once. "And since I met Anneka along the way I thought to grab some pizza before coming over. But if you, were sleeping then I could wait."

"I was just watching TV actually." Jeremy flops down on the couch and smiles, motioning her to sit down as well. "So, what did you bring?"

Yi slides down onto one of the cushions, deposting the shoulderbag in her lap with a flump. It's really full of books as she opens it, drawing out some of the titles. English in Six Weeks. 500 Hot SAT Words. A multitude of college english texts taken from the SCCU library, though how might be something to be pondered. There's even a Dr. Seuss book, but that goes quicklike back into the bag when it slips out. "I wasn't sure which one to start with..." she admits.

Jeremy smiles and reaches into your bag, taking out the Dr Seuss one first. "Cat and the hat." He says, holding it out to her. "Can you read this? If not, then this is the perfect book to start off with first."

Yi chews on the surface of her tongue, before shaking her head. "I got about halfway, but stopped for lunch," the Gnawer says. "But _Green Eggs and Ham_ was easier." A moment of silence passes. "Well... easier to just look at the pictures."

Jeremy smiles slightly at you and motions you to open it up. "C'mon, start. Read outloud to me."

Yi opens up the book, all the world expecting to stumble along. And she does, although it's not so bad. Most of it's readable for her, due to television (gotta love those PBS shows). But the way she reads the book, seems more like she's eyeing the pictures and trying to remember what the page had said from before than actually reading it aloud.

Jeremy scoots up close to you and peers over your shoulder, reading along as you go. Chin tilting forward, he gives her a slight nudge. "Sound it out slowly if you have to. Don't try and be perfect."

Yi winces. Darn, caught. She keeps on going, slowing down to a painstakingly slow crawl through each page. One letter by one letter. One phoneme by one phoneme. At one point, she sits back against the couch, book flipped up so she can see the text. But it might as well be Sanskrit.

Jeremy smiles at the progress, tilting his head to one side and watching. He waits for you to finish, then pokes you in the shoulder, winking.

Yi slowly reads through the book. "He has... some.. thing. Call-e-duh. A v--.. voo-m?" Yi's vocabulary expands! Voom! She puzzles it out. "Voom?"

Jeremy softly laughs. "I dno't know what a voom is. Unfortuantly I never understood Dr Seuss. I just know that he is good easy to learn reading material." He tilts his head to one side.

Yi looks at you, brow arching. "If /you/ don't understand what he is saying, how can I know?" The girl's skepticism abounds, overriding the frustration of pouring over the children's book.

Jeremy chuckles. "We aren't here to understand the words, just learn how to read them. If you can get the pronunciation's right, then learning their meanings can come next. Seuss isn't one to understand or comprehend. He is a good teacher in the ways of how to use your tongue."

Yi looks from the kin back to the book. "Maybe I should have gotten the other one. Green Eggs and Ham was easier. Fox in a box, and here and there..." she mumbles sullenly, staring at the words. Almost there too. Just two more pages. Which she rambles through, purposefully and deliberately until the last page is turned. After which, she stares at the last, white sided back cover of the book. Woot.

Jeremy smiles and nods his head at that. "Good job, even tho'ya cheated on that last page by rushing it. English is tricky cuz' of all the slang, but once you get the hang of it, its easy. I mean, you speak it well enough. Sometimes its best to form the word in your head."

"Easy to say, and listen to," Yi nods, tapping the side of her head. "I know most of the things in the store. That's from TV. But something like this, not much TV to help. Two for One at Domino's, 2.99 Grand Slam breakfast at Denny's. McDonald's menu," Yi keeps on going. Food. The most important thing next to knowing how to ask where the bathroom is. She closes the book symbollically. Hah! Take that you stupid cat and your silly striped hat.

Jeremy nods his head at that and smiles. "Open that book up again. You aren't done yet." He says, lifting up a brow. He reaches into his own back pack, then takes out a pad of paper and a pen. "I want you to write out the words this time, at least the first three pages. Then, read them back to me."

Yi looks from the book to the kin. Then to the book again. What? Write? English? The Gnawer's confidence flags a little bit. What did she get herself into with this tutor thing? "I can write," she protests, "I learned it in school."

"Good, then I should be impressed." Jeremy says, tilting his head to her. "So write it out for me. The first three pages."

Yi gives you a 'look', and then takes the pen and pad. "It's a long book," she continues to mutter, flipping open to the first page. As she writes, her handwriting actually doesn't look so bad - practice from working the Tin-Yen, and some schooling that she likely forgot on purpose. Once the first three pages are written down, she pauses and looks at her own writing. Neat, but slightly inclined because of the pad's angle. "So..." she trails, looking at the pad.

"Not bad..." Jeremy says as he studies her hand writing. "Can you read it back to me now?" He asks, glancing back to her, propping his chin up in the palm of his hand. He is impressed that she is even that good.

Yi hms aloud, contemplating Jeremy's question. Or rather, deciding whether she really wants to read it back to him or not. She stands up from the couch, scooting away with the pen and pad, smirking a little. "I just read the book to you! You want me to read it again?" She sticks her tongue out at the kin, and then laughs.

Jeremy shifts himself some to the side, nudging her. "Stop being so proud. I want to know if you can read your own handwriting back to me." He grins wryly. "You can read text on a page, but I want to know if you can read that." He gives her a slight smile. "If you don't want to, we don't have to. We can move on to something else."

"If I wrote it, I should be able to read it shouldn't I?" Yi mulls around rhetorically. "Fine, fine." The asian looks to the pad, then the book. Then the pad again. No pictures to help her this time. Squinting, narrowing her eyes at the print, she sucks at a tooth. "The sun did not s...shy... Shine. It wuh-z too wet to play. So, we sat in the ho-us-ee... house. All that... cold, cold, wet day." It goes on like this, though the Gnawer does catch on to a correlation. The words in the book, and the ones in front of her, the letters forming together and syllables matching up with the sound of the word, the connections clicking albeit slowly.

Nodding his head proudly, Jeremy crosses his arms about you, giving you a firm hug. "Look at that, you did it." He says, releasing you. "That was amazing, you really are getting the hang out of it." He caught on to the pictures thing earlier and knew this would be a challenge.

Well aside from admitting that the pictures helped, Yi is inwardly proud of herself too. That wasn't so overly painful. The hug is unexpected, but appreciated with a hug back at least and a smile. The compliment well received in her mind, makes her laugh shyly. "What did you expect?" she kids, "I did go to school. The last few classes were some English, because of the before 1997 expiration of Hong Kong's lease to the UK." A hint of a grin winds its way across his face. "Thats good. At least you can speak it well. The reading an writing part is what comes harder. The more you write tho', the more easier it gets to read cuz' you know how the letters sound and how they flow on the page. You have a dictionary in your bag?"

Yi glances once at you, and then looks to the bag. "Yes, a Mandarin-English one. It seems sort of silly to have a full English dictionary when I cannot read the definition itself." She grins with a quirk of her lip.

"Well, how 'bout if I pick out thirty words a week from it, and you can read them an learn the meanings of 'em? Then, you can come up with a sentence for each word and make it up, writing it out. That way, you know the word, understand the meaning, and know how to use it in a sentence."

Jeremy adds. "Also, it helps with your writing ability too.

Yi blinks, still looking in the direction of the bag. That ominous, dark bag with the thick Mandarin to English dictionary. "That seems like a lot," she murmurs. "But... I guess it will be quicker."

Jeremy smiles. "I'll find easy words. Nothing too big or hard. Remember, I speak Mandarin an write it also, if anything, I can write out the word in English and the meaning in Mandarin so that you'd understand it."

Yi nods slowly, though the arch in her brow questions. "How did you learn Chinese?" she queries. "You know Cantonese too?"

Jeremy grins faintly. "School, actually. It was a strong suggestion by the tribe in Portland that the kin become multi lingual at a young age, because of our influences internationally. Asia is full of Walkers, its a place of technology. So, to have proper relations, we need to understand one another eh'?"

Yi smiles and nods. "Oh, I believe it. Although many still need translators." She actually looks really impressed though. "What other languages do you know?"

Jeremy ponders for a moment in thought. "French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin, and thats it. I don't know Cantonese."

Yi blinks a few more times, with each language listed off. Her eyes are actually open wide, with due curiosity and awe. Then she smiles, and to taunt him, says something in Cantonese cheerily.

Jeremy chuckles and peers at her, then responds back in Cantonese, something just as cheery. "(Wise man once said...) Wasssssup!" Oy, he was toying with you. That or that is all he really knows of it.

Yi laughs again, and shakes her head. "You are one funny guy, Jeremy," she says before travelling back to the couch. "Well, I should get back to my flat. Never know who's going to try and steal the nothing that is there." The girl packs the books back into the bag, pausing when the pad and pen are in her hand. She leaves these on the cushion.