My head hurts – learning Chinese

Ow. My head hurts. I just finished my first Chinese lesson in a month or so. It was depressing how much I forgot but actually kind of encouraging how much I remembered (which is anything at all). It was only my second class solo, since Tom, my old partner in crime, left. The first one was unbearably depressing, thinking about why he wasn’t here. This time wasn’t as bad on that front as I have processed it all a bit more now. But it was still sad. And much harder! We do two-hour lessons. It didn’t seem that long with tom. The three of us had fun.

But solo.. .man, that’s a long time. By the end, I was forgetting things I knew five minutes prior and felt like crying or screaming, or throwing something breakable against the wall.

Becky was still here when Wang laoshi arrived and she came over to say hi and chatted a bit in Chinese. I am proud of her. She’s really moving along and I predict that she will be speaking passable survival Chinese in the next couple of months. I’m not so sure about myself, though I did make sure to learn how to say, “I would like meat pancakes and fried noodles please.” Of course, if I really remember that I won’t have anything to write about up here and in my columns, but I’ll figure something out.