Back in Class

I started attending Chinese language classes again on monday. I studied for six months here in Taipei last lear, and will complete a three month semester this year. I've seven classmates. a German man, a Japanese woman, a Korean girl, two Indonesian Chinese girls and two Indonesian Chinese boys. I have classes from monday to friday. Learning Chinese is quite, that is to say, very difficult, as I mentioned in an earlier post, in fact alot of what my teacher is saying I don't understand too well, as classes are conducted entirely in Chinese. This doesn't seem to matter too much - when I was a complete beginner I understood very little of what was going on but still managed to learn a great deal. Thus far I am able to write around 350 traditional characters (as opposed to thier simplified forms introduced by Mao in mainland China), still a long way from the 2000 or so you need to be "fluent". I can also speak more that I can write, from where the real rewards for my efforts come from, being able to make myself understood out on the street puts a smile on my dial.