Another interest/hobby of mine is learning Mandarin Chinese. I joined a class back in January of this year and I've loved every minute of it, even though its a bitch of a language to get a grasp on.
For these first six months I was part of a small beginner's class, learning the basics and useful phrases and conversations for say, if you went on a trip to China; booking a hotel room, asking for directions etc. We've been learning both the pinyin (the Chinese words written with the English alphabet) and the Chinese characters, so its been a pretty hard slog.
Last week, Cathy (the teacher) told us that we'd be joining her other, more advanced class that's been running for TWO YEARS. I must admit that I was scared joining the other class this week and there was a lot of vocabulary flying around that I didn't really understand, but it wasn't quite as horrific as I expected it to be and I think I managed to grasp the most important stuff we learned.
Well, the new class involves learning the sounds, pinyin and characters to short Chinese poems, which I love! I couldn't find a copy of the poem we worked through this week, but here is one of my favourites that I found a while ago - first in English, then in the Chinese characters and pinyin.
An Invitation to Mr Liu
by Bai Juyi
Green lees of beer that's newly brewed,
A little stove of red clay burns.
As evening comes, the sky's about to snow,
Can you drink one cup with me?
I love this simple, brief poem and how it manages to conjure up such a vivid, cosy, friendly image in my mind of a chilly Winter's evening. This poem and many other Chinese poems can be found at this fantastic site: Chinese-Poems.com
Anyways..next post will be about Miyazaki. Until then..
Much love,
Byebye
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