Language learning woes.

so, as i've said i'm learning PuTongHua! (mandarin chinese).

Wow, this is a lot more difficult than i thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be tough, and at times frustrating. But, even after a nice chinese lady told me 'it's a hard language.. don't feel bad if you can't.' i just decided to try harder.

But wow, sometimes i feel like i'm spinning my tires and not going anywhere. O_o. Today I ate some delicious Chow Mein at a local imbiss/food shack place. There actually were chinese customers, which is rare. normally it's just americans, from my experience. Anyhow, they were speaking so fucking fast it was incredible. I thought i was going to be sick. I could pick up a few words and phrases, which i guess I shoul dbe proud of. But they were really cruising along. Yeah, it's not good to listen to other peoples conversations. but I can't understand most of what they're saying, it was loud and in public. So, just because it's in a language most people don't understand doesn't mean you should talk about personal things in public. So ididn't feel horribly bad about listening.

Also, There's a 1LT in my unit who is also learning chinese. She already speaks fluent french, is married to some french doctor or whatever, and is getting out of the military. She's currently the Commanders secretary(they say 'executive officer'... but that means secretary that has other secretaries. :D ) she's really nice, a health fanatic and very intelligent. So we're going to pool our resources when learning chinese for the next few months. She's getting out of the military and will be spending the summer teaching Chinese children English over in china. I'm so jealous. I don't think I can pursue this route because I don't have a degree. by the time i get a degree and get out of the military (6 years from now probably), i'll probably be too old to get a good job in that field. It seems like so many people are heading out into that career path, i hope it's not overfilled by the time I can actually enter it as well. I don't want to get rich or make a ton of money doing it. I make 'ok' money now, and I pretty much hate my life. money is not the source of happiness. Doing something worthwhile with my life would probably make me feel better.

I just ordered Integrated Chinese 1 and it's work book, as well as 'reading and writing chinese; simplified' from amazon. It should be here withina week or 2. I'm excited! :)

Also.. chinesepod.com had an awesome show this Saturday. They had a special guest who was this little british kid that is learning chinese. he made up a 'the sunday show' to copy chinesepod.coms 'the saturday show'. it was brilliant. i wish i had learned chinese when i was a youngster. Hell I wish i learned ANY foriegn language.

till next time ,
Zai Jian