Lessons

Well, I did French in school for 4 years and I still sort of 3/4 know it, and I did Arabic night-classes and have forgotten it all, and Italian night classes and remember a good bit of it, and then I did a few language lessons when I was living in Beijing ("survival chinese"). So, I'm semi-fluent in lots of languages! I decided a few weeks ago to try to improve my slightly sketchy knowledge of at least one of these languages, so I looked around on nightclasses.ie and found a cheapish Chinese course on up in a place on Baggot street on weds nights. Cool!

Started the course tonight and was definitely value for money! There were only two of us in it - altho there's supposed to be 7 signed up. Happy days for the organizers if they've already paid their money I guess :-) Didn't really cover muchfirst night: pronunciation of the tones (which is always a bitch from what I remember from last time), "Ni hau ma?" and the usual greetings stuff - altho we got a bit of grammar as well. Will see how we go next week!

One thing that I definitely found is that I'll need to rewrite my notes when I get done each day - I haven't done any real writing bar signing credit card slips and a few scribbled notes at my desk in the last few years (and even then we're gone to Chip & PIN with the credit card so I don't even do that any more), and my writing, never all that good in the first place, has really gone to shyte! I might as well be a doctor!