Be Pe Me Fe

I had my first Mandarin class on Monday. Learned quite a bit, mostly pronunciation with the odd word thrown in. I want to learn just words, but I guess you have to learn to crawl before you can walk, otherwise you'll walk all crooked?

Mandarin from first impression looks a lot easier to learn then Cantonese. Cantonese is all memorizing, which is why I never had a interest in it (or couldn't retain any of it). I'm not a memorization kind of fellow I'd rather figure things out on my own. Which is why Pinyin (the English spelling for Mandarin words) is so great.

I'm taking the class with a co-worker and her sister, I probably wouldn't be taking the course if they weren't taking it as well. While in the class in walks this girl and she looks so familiar. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, until she sat down. Then it hit me, it was Sophie Lui (ok well she said her name was Sophie) from Global (at least I think she's on Global). She seems like a really nice girl I didn't talk to her even though she sat near me. I'd like to ask her questions about what it's like to be in the media, but I don't want it to sound like I'm hitting on her: "Hey don't I know you from somewhere?"

I don't think anyone else noticed, if they did they kept their cool about it and didn't give her a second look. Co-worker didn't seem to care much, neither did her sister, they were too busy laughing. We were given diagrams of the cross-section of how our mouths are supposed to look like when speaking Mandarin, they thought it was the reproductive system.

Back to Mandarin though, kind of an overwhelming first class as we went over 10 pages of stuff, but I think I'll do fine. Only problem is I'll have to miss one of the classes because I'll be in Mexico, and the last class falls on my birthday. I don't want to skip since I paid for it and I'm trying to make a commitment to learn the language, but I'll decide when the time comes.

Despite it being the first class, and I'm just scratching the surface here, I'd still recommend it if you're on the fence of whether to learn or not. I'm taking it at Langara, cost me $169 for the course.