GUYS THIS HAS BEEN THE BEST WEEK OF MY LIFE I SWEAR. I THOUGHT THEY WOULDNT LET ME KNOW FOR A WHIIILE

GUYS THIS HAS BEEN THE BEST WEEK OF MY LIFE I SWEAR. I THOUGHT THEY WOULDNT LET ME KNOW FOR A WHIIILE OMGOMG IM GOING TO TAIWAN

week 1 of studying chinese everyday in january

so ive (kinda) started over with mandarin to learn traditional characters rather than simplified, which is what i learned in the CHN101 course at my community college

this is because i’ll hopefully be studying in taiwan over the summer and that is where most of my interest is plus traditional should somewhat help with japanese as well as if i wanna learn cantonese in the future

i didnt record what i did daily so heres a summary so far

- have gotten an okay handle on zhuyin, just need practice and to learn where each character is on apples zhuyin keyboard since the site i used to learn used something else. i do like the concept more than pinyin but some of the final combinations confuse me (more on that another day)

- started reviewing my integrated chinese textbook as thats what both my old and current college use as their class resources. i bought the fluencylink (e-learning) account this time instead of the physical textbook and i looove it, its interactive, contains all the audio/video to go along and gives immediate grades on each section you complete. i did buy the physical workbook just to have in class though.

- have been taking some online classes through LTL and despite signing up/paying for group classes every class ive taken so far has just been 1 on 1 (i take them at like 3 am so i guess other people just dont sign up for those times) and have been enjoying it! online classes and tutors have made me anxious in the past and prior to this my online mandarin teachers almost never corrected my tones which i hated but these are great! i definitely feel like my pronunciation has improved but i still have to work a lot on sentence flow and tone sandhi/combinations.

- scouring the internet for taiwanese shows/movies/youtubers etc to get a feel for the accent differences and just for some listening practice (if you have recommendations lmk)

- also been going crazy looking for apps and sites that offer traditional characters as most are made for simplified/standard mandarin. i have a few that i like so far but hope to find more. i like to have a textbook to guide me through and give me structure but also various other resources to learn things that interest me or that i’ll actually talk about in daily conversation.

overall feeling pretty good and pretty excited to finally get back to studying languages and traveling.

oh and!!! i have mostly finalized what my chinese name is with the help of the teachers i’ve had so far, hence the username change as well and it is … 昕霓 ! (xīnní) i havent chosen a last name tho as im not sure if i need one atm but if anyone has ideas as to what would sound good im open to suggestions.

if anyone would want it im more than happy to post what resources ive been using, and/or what media ive been watching/liking that use traditional characters since its definitely been a little more challenging to find it all. lmk !!

wait did y'all know there's a ton of free language course resources for u.s. peace corps training??

THINGS I NEED TO DO ASAP

- so much chinese (ch7-9)

- repatriation of objects paper due 4/11

- finish virtual exhibition, checklist & discussions, make a brochure??

- ethnographic film presentation (watch dreams - kurosawa, make slideshow)

- dreams, dreaming & culture s3 & s7

- catch up on reading for All classes

- national student exchange meeting wednesday @ 9:30 am

- pass/fail deadline 4/18

updates !! finally !!

got the last of my grades back for the fall semester :)) very happy w them and my gpa (3.425)

enjoyed my classes a lot this term (with the exception of ethnomusicology due to the professor).

did better in dinosaurs than i expected tbh but it was a super fun class even if some of the work was hard.

overall a good first semester at my new school, made some friends, joined some clubs, and love my program so far :)

so im trying to study mandarin at least an hour a day (or at least everyday that im not at work) for all of january (i need to review soooo much before the school semester starts) and i forgot to make daily posts lol so ill post a week 1 summary this weekend then update everyday after that