First Day of School

Today was our actual first day of classes. I arrivede before 8am where we had to change classrooms due to the construction going on, so we moved to the second floor. We chose our desks, and anxiously waited for our lessons. I felt like I was back in the 3rd grade again.

We reviewed the Chinese initial letters and then the final letters, where we reviewed with the teacher and then on our own. As we continue to review the sounds from the alphabet, our teacher would give us these strange looks, like what are you trying to say because I can't tell, and the start to giggle. We practiced, practiced and then practiced some more for the rest of the class.

The second class was pretty much the same as the first class, except more emphasis on the four tones. She would instruct us to say O in Chinese, using the first, second, third and fourth tone. Let's just say, we had about as much luck speaking in this class as we did in the last class. This teacher, Ms. Chen, would keep saying, no good, no good, and then tell us on how to shape our mouths so that we would get the correct tone. She went from one classmate to the next in attempting us to get this letter correct. Once we somewhat mastered that, we moved onto the other vowels and then some words that we could use. She taught us how to say person in Chinese which is, ren. with the third tone. For this word, we had to place our tongues in the middle of our mouth and then finish with the tongue sticking out of your mouth like you were biting it. Finally, when she thought we could say it, then we were instructed to tell her what country we originated from in a sentence. For me it would be, Wo, using the third tone, shi, using the second tone, Jainada, in 1st, 2nd, and 4 tone, and finally ren, in third tone.

Okay, did you get all that? Yea, that's we said too...