Chinese!

Hey y'all. I was having a lovely day until I began my Chinese learning. Some background on why in the world I would want to torture myself by learning this language first, though!

I like to call myself an inexperienced linguist. I've been taking French since I was 5 years old and I just started Spanish this past school year. I can hold a conversation in French about anything, so I guess you could say that I'm fluent (besides the frivolous grammar mistakes. *cough* passe compose versus imparfait *cough*). I was advised not to take two languages at one time because I would not have a free period and I would get confused...fast, but, being myself, I went against everything everyone said and took both because I really wanted to learn Spanish! The culture, the language and the people seemed were so intriguing, I just had to take a stab at it. No, I didn't have a free period, and yes, I experienced many cold, late, dark (see previous post on why it was dark) nights in my room, but it was so worth it! I love Spanish and I love being able to communicate with my Spanish speaking family not using English. I'm glad I now am at least a tad experienced in Spanish because it made me realize some career paths that I may want to take! I love learning languages and they're definitely my favorite subjects!

Okay, back to Chinese. My dad had to learn a little for a business trip to China back in September, so we have some books lying around not getting any use. In order to get something out of this summer besides fun and relaxation, I think learning Chinese would be good for my brain. Good for my brain and also something small to make me happy. As I said, I love learning languages and other cultures are fascinating to me. That absolutely does not exclude Chinese language/culture. As much as I want to learn the language, it's hard. It's beyond difficult actually. I'm one of those people that gets very discouraged if they don't get something right away, so after about 45 minutes, I closed the book, took a deep breath and decided to do something else for a little while.

Tomorrow, I'll definitely sit down again with the book and the CD and recite some more syllables, but in the meantime, I'm trying to relax a bit and remind myself that nobody is perfect and nobody understands everything right away. I try to go against that and name people in my life who are "perfect" and do everything "perfectly," but that's clearly negatively effecting me. It negatively effects everyone! Just a little life lesson that may seem obvious, but I fail to see it quite frequently: Nobody is perfect, nor should you be!


Signed,
Penelope P.