Mandarin Class

Yesterday was my first day of Mandarin class. Drew's work gives the trailing spouse a stipend to spend on "self-improvement", to assist her in finding a job. Well, I am using that dinero for language classes. My class consists of myself and two other women, so class size is nice and small. One is a lady from Switzerland who speaks German but looks Indian. The other is a lady from Pakistan married to a Chinese Australian. I've started to realize that my "I'm white and from America" schtik is really very boring and stereotypical.

The class went really well. The first hour is vocab and grammar. Compared to English, Chinese grammar is really very simple. It's the tones and lots of vocab that's difficult. It was taught by a Chinese young adult named Amy. She was very straightforward, with minimal enthusiasm. Most of the stuff I had already learned from Drew and my three mandarin lessons with Jade back in Colorado. Both of my classmates kept commenting on how quickly I was learning this stuff, and I sheepishly didn't admit I had learned it before. I was enjoying the attention, ok?

The second hour was with a young lady named Candy. She was very enthusiastic and bubbly. When she was introducing herself as Candy, one of the students gave her a strange look. She laughed and said, I know my name is funny, I wish I could change it sometimes. This got a funny look from me. I didn't say this out loud, but don't Chinese people pick their American names? Therefore, if she realizes her name is silly, why doesn't she change it? She could if she really wanted to... The second hour is conversation, basically practicing what we just learned. The third tone, up, down, up, is the hardest for me.

The class is two hours a day for ten days. I'll be an expert when I'm done! Or at least able to move on to Beginner 2. And no, we don't learn any characters right now, just the pin yin, or written out English version of stuff.