Last day...

Today was the last day of my first semester learning Chinese. It's hard to believe that three months have already passed and I have survived them. It was not without its challenges through. The teacher has given me (and my fellow students) tongue twisters, songs, and poems. A bit of a rough call considering we are just beginners I think...

The next week will be holidays for me and to reflect on what I have learned so far. I can tell you that I now know the following:

• I can count up to a really big number. One that has at least seven or eight zeros in it. This aspect was more difficult that what one might imagine. In English, you have counting units such as hundreds and thousands. However, the Chinese language has a counting unit for ten thousands (called wan). Therefore to say the figure of 100,000 in English is one hundred thousand. Whereas to say this figure in Chinese is ten wan because they use one wan that is ten thousand in English. Confused??? I luckily am not...
• I have a vocabulary of approximately 160 words ( I believe that there is approximately 60,000 to 80,000 words in the Chinese language) that can loosely be used together. At least I can greet people, say I hear but not understand, ask if they speak English, say what country I am from and some other basic phrases.
• Finally this is probably one of the most important things I have learned, to become extremely confused with their grammar rules (well I understand some of them).

I guess this is why I have been given a week off from school to process and make sure I understand for the next semester in a week's time. I do have a little bit of help as I have started doing language exchange with a local girl. She teaches English in primary school and is hoping to go to Australia to study for her Masters next year. The language exchange that takes place is me helping her write short essays and she helps me with anything Chinese that I am having trouble with.

To mark the last week of our semester, my teacher organised a trip for all of us to a local restaurant. Afterwards, the students who didn't go home, the teacher drove us around Kaohsiung and the bay area. On the way back from a coffee shop, we encountered another local in the hills. We luckily enough had some biscuits from our coffee break to feed the hungry little local. I am told that there are many monkeys in the mountains but I didn't see any of his/her friends.

Also for all my hard work over the last three months (well hard work is what I am telling people anyway) I have a certificate from the Language School that looks pretty impressive.

Anyway, back to the total immersion and hoping that the Chinese becomes a little less like Chinese and more like English...

Till next time, haveagoodone...