Back to School

Saturday morning we headed to Kokomo for Chinese class. Yep, we're attempting to learn to speak Chinese. (And yep ... it's quite comical.) There is a Chinese husband and wife that teach a class every other Saturday. The class mainly works on speaking Chinese, but they've also done some cooking and Chinese festival celebrations. In this week's lesson we began learning pinyin, which is basically the result of translating Chinese symbols and sounds into American letters and sounds. Unfortunately, it's much more difficult than it sounds ... as we learned that the letter "R" in pinyin actually sounds like the sound you make when saying the "j" in deja vu - the ggg sound. Puzzled? So are we!

Anyway, it was such a good time. The teachers are wonderful and sweet, as were the other students in the class, which consists of adoptive families. There were four beautiful Chinese girls who'd all been adopted from China and were learning how to speak their native language. What a blessing this class is for them and their families. Plus there is another waiting family who's LID is January 17, 2006 - just a few weeks before ours. (Thanks, Maryann, for telling me about the class!)

My favorite part of the class was the opportunity we had to hear from the teachers about the Chinese culture. They spoke briefly about the cultural revolution in China and how that affected the way social classes were treated. They also talked about the "one child policy" and how there are now many migrant workers with children who are not registered with the government (which is the equivalent of us getting our social security number) and how this will need to be addressed by the government. And as a special treat, at the end of the class yesterday we were all able to eat a Chinese popsicle that had these gelatin-type pieces in it. Oddly enough, Spencer accurately describes the taste as a frozen berry cereal. That really was a good way to describe it. We can't wait to go back! And more than that, we can't wait to take Malia! But for now, I'll just say zaijian - Goodbye!