My first real language learning lesson

In Mandarin, that is -- I did actually take a couple barely-there classes in Turkish, Hungarian and German. Besides, of course, actually studying Portuguese as a child. English just came naturally -- and with plenty of study. :) --And I might even pick up some Australian during my stay here. :D

A few of us drove into town to meet at a McDonald's: to meet a few teachers, that is -- and several others from other Homes... My first language-learning lesson that happened on the spur of the moment, when trying to figure out today's ride to the office. It ended up turning out well enough to just tag along, as we discovered there would be a "beginners'" class, too -- pick me!

Our teachers are student teachers, so I guess there's some learning for them, too, heh. Anyway, it was kind of interesting to get my first taste of a real attempt at learning Mandarin. I also see it'll take a lot of hard work. Our small group of 4 was made up of me, Marie and her two daughters, Christi and Claire. Christi and Claire have actually had some classes and are "way ahead" of us, haha. Well, I think whatever we went over today was mostly review for them.

Anyway, our teacher, Leila (most people I've interacted with have an English name, too -- I need to get me a Chinese name :] ), did ask us, at the end, what we're interested in learning, so she'll probably come up with a more specific-to-our-needs program, which will be helpful. I asked for grammar basics and a little bit of culture info, since there are probably some basic dos and don'ts that are good to know for life in general, in Taiwan. In my opinion.

My next class is in two weeks and in the meantime I have a lot of learning to do. Well, I realized I need to get basic pronunciation down if I want to make any progress at Claire and Christi's level, which would be helpful, if we hope to make our group work, heh. I kind of got a general understanding of the tones -- there are 5 of them -- but I think it'll take a lot of repetition, as well as hearing it pronounced properly over and over, which was a little hard to hear in the noisy and rather rushed environment.

Anywaaay... I have my work cut out for me, so I'll need to invest some time in that between now and the next class. It's an area requirement that everyone learn the language, so we recently asked the Lord for a plan that would work for us individually and informed our HMs, so they can help us enact those plans, so this is one step toward all that. I'll probably go down anyway, next Saturday, even if my class isn't happening, just to get some study time while the more intermediates study.

Well, is good...