At last, I've taken up Chinese

I've just finished my first Chinese class and it was just hilarious. I could never get my tongue round the four different tones.

The original idea came from Blinger who once noted that every language teacher should learn a foreign language so that she can better relate to her students and what they go through in their language classes. Furthermore, better understanding of Chinese is definitely beneficial as most of my students are ethnic Chinese.

As far as the language itself is concerned, I don't set my expectations too high because I've got only 3 months to go here in Malaysia. My goal is esentially to get to grips with the pronunciation which means (if I understand it correctly):

1) the 4 tones so that I'm comprehensible to native Chinese speakers,
2) the Hanyu Pinyin system so that I can learn on my own and use various learning tools