Saturday, February 02, 2008

Ni Hao!

That means "Hello" in Mandarin and we now hear that about 27 times a day. Why? Because Kate has started taking Mandarin lessons! She just loves it. Now every Saturday I take Kate to the China Academy - which happens to be across the street at the college so we just cross the street and we're there! She is in the preschool class, and parents are asked to sit in so I get to pick up a bit as well. At home we get to listen to the provided CDs a certain number of times a week and just work on the songs and words which to Kate is like a game! All of the children in the class, except for Kate, are actually lovely little girls who were adopted from China. The parents are just terrific and it is a really great hour out of my day. Coming up this month the girls are singing songs in the Chinese New Year show that the whole school puts on. I am really looking forward to learning a lot and seeing Kate's progress as well. My experience as a child in Hong Kong mostly exposed me to Cantonese, not Mandarin, so this is starting from scratch for me! We'll see how it all goes!

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