Back to school...

Being half Chinese, I get asked if I'm Chinese a lot. My looks must throw people. They either assume I'm fully Chinese or they get confused as to what exactly I am because I look a little different. When I reply yes I am half Chinese, the standard second question is do you speak Chinese. I take a deep breath, respond in the negative, and prepare for the condescending disapproving looks. The tuts and head shakes are not just from the older generation, my peers have been known to frown and reply, why not? Aren't you proud to be Chinese? Don't you want to learn? It's so infuriating! Yes I'm proud, and yes I want to speak it, but I can't! My mother can't! My grandmother speaks English, all the time! So stop looking at me like I just admitted I'm a mass murderer!

Anyway, disapproving patriots aside, learning Chinese IS something I wanted to do, but with my habit of having big ideas and never seeing them through, all I ended up with was a PC full of Cantonese and Mandarin mp3s and a web browser full of free resource bookmarks. So this year, I decided to put my money where my mouth was, literally, and pay for proper lessons. I'd done all the research, several times, so I found a course at Bromley college, asked about 10 different people for affirmation it was £156 well spent, ummed and ahhed a bit more, and booked it! 30 weeks of accredited Mandarin tutoring, complete with final exam (which no one has failed before by the way, no pressure!).

Last night was my first class. Walking into the lesson was like first day of school all over again. The nervous hi's and tension. The class size was small, 7 of in total, all around my age. There were two other half chinese girls there, one half Vietnamese who spoke tiny bit of Cantonese, and another half Finnish who spoke no Chinese at all, like me. There was also a Japanese girl and an English girl and two guys. Our teacher Peggy is great. Enthusiastic and friendly, from Taiwan. She uploads the lesson onto mp3 for us to download, sets us homework sheets and looks like she's going to be an excellent tutor. By the end of stage 1 we should know introductions, hobbies, time, days months, colours, food, directions, general survival stuff I guess! So now I just have to practice my homework phrases! Apparently my boyfriend says I have a good accent already! Yay! So enthusiastic right now, let's hope it lasts!!

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