Has anyone seen my dignity?

Well, the inevitable has finally happened. My first breakdown. It was two days ago and it was NOT pretty. But, luckily for Scott, it was short lived because I only had about 20 minutes to have a good cry before our next class. This is how it started...

We started language classes last Wednesday. We are the only two people in the class, because we are being privately tutored. We have four different classes: pronunciation, conversation, listening, and integrated skills. Our pronunciation class was on Wednesday, and it was a piece of cake. We just learned the sounds that a,e,i,o,u make (very different than our sounds), and then we combined them with consonants, and then we learned diphthongs. Like I said, piece of cake.

Unfortunately, I couldn't attend any of our three classes on Thursday (I was bonding with the toilet), but Scott did a good job catching me up. Friday, we don't have any classes. Yay for long weekends!

So Monday comes, and I meet my integrated skills teacher. His English is excellent, and I was so proud that I had learned to write several Chinese characters even though I missed the first class, and I aced the little quiz he gave us! The only problem was, he told me that writing with my left hand would not allow me to make the characters correctly. I was like, I'M LEFT HANDED! I was close to telling him that I bet he couldn't write with his left hand, but my better judgement kept my smartalec mouth shut.

Long story short, I tried my hardest to write right-handed, but was close to tears (it didn't help that he kept saying "Ooh, Scott you write so beautifully. Christine, you should write like him.") and finally Scott said it wouldn't be possible for me to write right-handed, and he relented.

But Tuesday is the day I lost a lot of my dignity. Maybe it was a combination the multiple visits to bathrooms and the fact that I was born left-handed, but the straw that broke the camel's back was a class where a teacher gave us a sheet of the characters, told us what they meant, and then wanted us to employ these new phrases right then. She would say a phrase, and then wait for us to interpret. At first I was like, 'lady, this ain't happening!' I'm not sure why I didn't just say "this is too much, please slow down and can you teach us pinyin instead of these characters?", but I didn't, and when we got home after the class, I just cried and cried. I really felt stupid, and didn't like the idea of telling the teacher that it was too hard for me.
Plus, it was hard to be frustrated with the teacher... she is SO cute! Shanna, this is for you: she had on a pink coat with big pink buttons that she wore over her skirt, brown leggings and long brown boots with silver buckles and little heels.
She better be glad she's cute. ha ha, that's what I tell Scott all the time.

Maybe next weeks classes will be easier when we ask them to go slower. or maybe you will need to send Scott lots of presents to comfort him if I lose it again! ha ha!