Wuhan has a dialect too. I never realized a difference in the way I speak Mandarin before the other USAC kids pointed it out but apparently there is. One of the differences is that I make the s sound in words when it's actually meant to be the sh. For example, the Chinese word for water is shui, but I pronounce it as sui because that is how I learned the word through my family. When this was first brought to my attention, I was amazed at how many words this slight difference in pronounciation affected. Although I think the difference is unnoticeable, my friends always pick up on it. Lisa pointed out tonight that my relatives also don't say "sh", so it must be part of the dialect and not just my own mispronunciation.
It's great being home again! On the way from the airport to my grandma's, Lisa and I pointed out the characters, or hanzi, that we've learned so far on signs, which my relatives thought was hilarious because we could probably only read every 20th character or so that we saw.