Cantonese Class, Or, My First "Wtf" Moments in HK

I'll just start off by saying, I have never been particularly good at language classes.  I did decently well in French in high school, mostly just because many of the other students in my first year were stoners or had no desire to do any work, so I seemed like a peachy student in comparison.  However, I was never a stellar French student.  With Italian in college, I often ranked on the lower end in my class grade-wise, and while I managed to get through thanks to the help of my teacher, I still was pretty atrocious at it.  So you can imagine, if I had issues just with Romance languages, that the prospect of learning an Asian language, and one of the hardest languages at that, would be a bit daunting.  So when it came time to formulate an attitude towards my classes, I went with a resigned determination, not expecting too much, but wanting to try the best I could to learn as much as I could in the next five weeks.  So at least I knew going into it, it wasn't going to be easy.  It was going to be really freaking hard.

Well, I can say, after my first day of class....  at least I knew it was going to be really freaking hard.  I won't say it was harder than I imagined, because I imagined the worst, but it is *hard*.  I had a false sense of hope in the first 40 minutes of class, as I seemed to be doing well with the tones (Cantonese has nine tones, six of which we learned today - the remaining three are just slight variations on these six), so I was pleased with my progress.  However, after the requisite tonal lesson, our teacher (or, sinsaang) Terry took off, and words were being thrown around more quickly than I could translate them, and it became very overwhelming very quickly.  Many of the students in the class (in fact, I would say all of them, except Camille and I) have spoken Cantonese at some point, so their knowledge of vocabulary is already pretty significant, especially relative to my knowledge of vocabulary, which stands at... well, maybe three words after today.  To his credit, our teacher seems very, very cool and should be fun, though I will admit that I left class today feeling very frustrated.  It's just incredibly hard to keep up, and I worry about being left behind very quickly.  The frustrating thing is (and I know this will sound bad) that I know I'm a smart person, that I have done well at many other academic areas, but this is one thing I just can't seem to wrap my head around.  Grr!  I will say, though, it was pretty hilarious when today in class, as I sat looking stupefied at the language, my teacher looked at me and laughed, saying something like, "Jenny, wake up!" to which I replied, "I'm not tired, I just have no idea what you're saying..."  Here's hoping next week will go better!

My frustration followed me outside of class, as I grew surly with everything for the next couple of hours, from the seemingly-never-ending walk to my apartment to the weight of my bags to the heat.  However, my mood was lifted after I made my final (hopefully!) shopping trip to Shatin for the week, where I picked up the last few essentials for my room as well as a fantastic curling/straightening/multi-function hair iron.  I know this sounds hopelessly materialistic, but for all of the women out there who know how many hair tools I own, you can understand why this was a very exciting find for me.   While I did not get as much organizing as I would have liked done on my room today, I still feel productive, as I have now at least purchased nearly everything I need for the room.  Once I get it all put together, I will post pictures!  The color scheme is really pretty :)  I figure I can justify the cost, since this is for two years, after all, and being so far from home, shouldn't I try to be as comfortable and feel as homey as possible?  I think so.  It's been interesting setting up house here - lugging everything back on the MTR, figuring out how to make it feel like home, shopping for supplies where sometimes you have great selection and other times you're just stuck with what you see - and all of this is just for my bedroom, not even the whole apartment (that comes fully furnished, thankfully!)  But I guess these are the joys of being a grown-up, right?  But it will turn out lovely in the end - I only hope I'll be able to say the same thing about my Cantonese.

Tomorrow I'm off to brunch at a Branford friend's apartment and then a good-bye dinner for Jonathan, one of the departing Yale-China Fellows.  I haven't made concrete plans for the 4th yet, but supposedly there should be a good smattering of goings-on around town.  As always, I'll keep you posted!

xoxo

Jenny