Learning Chinese

I’m excited for tonight as I have my first in-person Mandarin class. After I got back from my honeymoon in January, I had a desire to learn Mandarin after visiting Singapore. I figured it would be fun to start on Duolingo and see where things went after a few weeks.

Things started out slow and I was doing a lesson or two a day. But then I started to get addicted. Duolingo does an amazing job gamifying the language learning experience. Within a couple of weeks, I was pretty darn addicted. So much that I would take a break during dinner with friends to do a lesson to ensure that I kept my daily streak up.

While the gamification is part of why I like Duolingo, I also realized that I just miss the learning experience. I’m fortunate to be in a job where I do learn a lot on the job, but learning a new language is something completely different than learning job skills or knowledge.

I wanted to speed up my learning so I decided to enroll in an in-person Mandarin class that meets weekly. I can’t remember the last time I was so excited to go sit in a classroom with a teacher. The in-person learning experience is also something I’m really looking forward to. It’s been awhile since I’ve been in a setting like this meeting new people.

I’m not sure how long it’ll take me to get to a conversational stage of Mandarin, but I’m excited for the journey ahead to say the least.