Finally

Finally I am back on the blog scene and I have no excuse for my lengthy absence. So, before I start sharing about Chinese, I have an interesting story about blogging. A few weeks ago, I decided to incorporate blogging into the classroom. The students picked up on it really quickly and became very engaged in the lesson because they were excited to share comments on other students' blogs. I was feeling quite proud of bringing this new technology to them until I realized over the last week or two that 3 of my Chinese students already have been basically blogging through a Chinese language site. In fact, they have figured out how to get both music and pictures up onto their blogs which is a skill I can't even fathom. I guess I still have even more things to learn from my students. So, the second humble observation is also my motivation for blogging again. One of my students showed me his blog/site today because he is beginning to write daily journal entries in English for practice. So, I decided that if he could write daily in English in his blog, then I surely could at least write my observations about learning Chinese every now and then as an educational and reflective experience.
So, looking at this Chinese blog has also been helpful because although I am basically lost with Chinese characters, every now and then I see one that I recognize and it feels like I have struck gold. I looked at the site and saw the character for people combined with another character and the character for day combined with another character. I was able to figure out that day meant something to do with daily/diary and he helped me to see that the other word was myself.

In class we have been focusing more on characters in Chinese II. I find myself extremely frustrated because I don't pick up the characters very quickly and there are so many of them. When I do find one that I recognize though, it is a great sense of satisfaction. I don't, however, feel as motivated about reading the characters because it seems like such an overwhelming task that I just give up basically from the start.

As far as speaking, I don't feel like I am learning more words at the same rate, but more just maintaining the words I do know. That being said, though, when I see some class worksheets or posters with the words that we have learned, I feel amazed at how much I do in fact know. The other realization is how logical Chinese is. Everything follows a pattern and so many words are made by compound words of putting ideas together. Beyond even learning the language, this part is interesting because it gives me insight into Eastern philosophy and perspective. For example, today when we learned the directions, we learned that you always start with east west, instead of north south. It is a different way to divide the world.

I recently bought the book "All Men Are Brothers" which is translated by Pearl Buck because it was recommended by my teacher. She states that it is one of the top four classic pieces of Chinese literature, so I am excited to dig into this when it arrives.