One Semester Down...

As many of you know, we have been taking an intensive Chinese course three times a week since we arrived in Taipei in August. Every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday night for the last four months we've hopped in a taxi after work and headed to Taipei Language Institute for two hours of Chinese language learning. And as much as it pains us to say that we're not fluent after these four months, we are learning a great deal and making progress with each new lesson. Joining us in class were three of our coworkers: Jeremiah, Ryan, and Brandon. Together we conquered the phonetic system (bo-po-mo-fo), struggled through the numbers system, and learned how to order our coffee, among many other things. Chinese is tough. Of that we're sure. We admire several of our native-English speaking friends' fluent Chinese skills. Well, and we're a little jealous. We hope that this is some driving motivation for us to study harder!

During the week we were fortunate enough to have two excellent teachers: Chen Laoshi ('laoshi' means 'teacher') and Leo Laoshi. Both teachers used active and hands-on learning to engage us. It was pretty fun and we generally looked forward to Chinese class. There were many times when our limited vocabulary caused us to form some rather strange sentences. I think Chip's favorite was "I only eat onions." He was pretty proud of that construction! And so were our teachers!

As we begin this new semester of learning, we anticipate an increase in our language level. Although we're only attending class one night a week this semester as opposed to three last semester, we're excited to get started. We'll do our best to keep you posted on our progress. So far we are neck-in-neck on our test scores. It's always fun to try to edge one another out and good motivation to study harder! Jiao!