The course begins (or rather, began)!

We are coming into the second week of our class. It's getting quite tiring, particularly in the afternoons! (I'm doing the intensive course - 6 hours per day.) Oh, by the way, after the placement test, I got into the A7 class, which I think, suit me quite well. The next class up is a lot more difficult, B6, I think, and the next class down is mainly for complete beginners, so they are going a lot slower.

In the first few days, we had pinyin review - practising different sounds and tones- very tiring and repetitive, but I think, very important. In the Chinese language, a different sound or tone can mean a different word. For example, the word for goldfish and whale (we were told), sounds very similar - jin and jing, so you could easily be asking for a whale if you mean to get a pet goldfish! Another example is, someone's name, Zhang (eg the actress Zhang Ziyi) and the word for "dirty" - "zang". If you mispronounce (I actually have a lot of trouble with the sounds z- and zh-), you, or rather, I, could be calling someone "Mr or Ms Dirty"!! Hmmm...I'd better keep practising!

We have three teachers - listening, speaking, and a comprehension teacher who teaches a combination of listening, speaking and writing. I find all the teachers quite good. The listening teacher is quite young, and a lot of fun, making the class interesting. The comprehension teacher is our "main teacher" looking after us - she is very nice and gives us her mobile number and tells us to call her if we have any problems. The speaking teacher is very professional and experienced, and doesn't take non-sense from some of the people in the class! Overall quite a good combination, I think.

As for the students in my class, there are 14 people from all around the world - from Hong Kong, England, Korea, Japan, Australia, Mauritius , Canada, South Africa, Thailand and the States - a mini-UN.

The couse also includes several excursions, or "field trips", as they call it. Last Friday we went to a nice Chinese Restaurant to eat (of course!) and learn how to order food. This coming Friday we are going to the Great Wall.

We have classes next weekend though, because of the one week National Holiday - called "golden week".