Being raised in a Chinese family, a lot of the values of my culture were instilled in who I was and the beliefs that I have; however, I was missing the very important aspect of my language. Lost at a very young age to make room for English, the Cantonese language became something I only barely understood. When some of my closest friends who were Mandarin were able to communicate so well with other Chinese persons, I became envious and wanted to take Chinese and so.. I did! Chinese is a lot of work; however, it's not impossible. Most every week there's a good amount of new vocabulary and new grammar structures to learn. We have one workbook that has our written homework and listening comprehension and a textbook with the words and grammar explanation. In the textbook we are shown the Chinese written character and its sound equivalent, or pinyin. Pinyin is like a language to itself and enables us to learn new words and gain an understanding of how that word should be pronounced. This is important because there are sounds in the Chinese language that are not found in the English language - like phoenetics, pinyin breaks down into a sort of "sound alphabet." Sounds complicated, bu the rewards of learning Chinese are very immediate. Tseng Laoshi has been a wonderful teacher and is more than willing to help us in any way she can. She takes out a lot of her very precious personal time to prepare "surprises" for us. These surprises may be a sweet or a joke or a different lesson plan. These little things show us how much she thinks about us, and has even at some occasions admitted that we find our way into her dreams! It's really a great class to go to and something I look forward to every day.