Archaeology 101

The layers of sediment that have settled on my Chinese language skills have been building up over time. As most of you know, my twin sister and I were born in Taiwan, but were adopted by an American family when we were 2 months old. The first two months of our lives were spent in a Chinese hospital maternity ward, where all of our needs (and most of our wants) were eagerly met by the nursing staff. We lived in Taiwan until we were almost three, enough time to lay a Chinese language foundation. After we moved to the States, our parents enrolled us in Chinese classes near Purdue University, but when you are four years old in a warm classroom on a Sunday afternoon, a nap seems so much more appropriate. My next attempt at "studying" Chinese was actually a graduation present from my mom. Melanie and I were invited to spend 6 weeks in Taiwan for a study tour hosted by the Taiwanese government. The short amount of time coupled with the fact that I was eighteen and on my own for the first time didn't make that learning experience very productive. It did, however, spark an interest in my country and language of birth. I chose Manchester College not only because they had an exchange program to China, but because they offered Chinese language correspondence courses through Ohio State. In my junior year, I earned college credit by doing workbooks, speaking with a teacher on the phone twice a week and working with a Chinese tutor in person once a week. My tutor thought I had a natural ability to speak Chinese because of my Chinese blood, but when I got to China in 1995 for my semester abroad, I was still a novice. I made great progress during my 5 1/2 months here, even taking a boat by myself to visit my study partner in her hometown of Qingdao (of beer fame).
Since then, I have paid little attention to the Chinese language, mostly due to lack of confidence. When Addison was in Kindergarten, her teacher asked me to read a simple sentence at her parent/teacher conference. The sentence was as follows:
我会写字, which means "I can write words". What I said was this:
我会马字, which means "I can horse words". There is very little that can boost the ego after such humiliation. I spent about 13 years tuning out Chinese, and worried that I would never be able to recover from it.
I know I am in the perfect class for my language ability. I almost didn't want to go to school, because I thought I'd have to start at the very beginning. Instead, I'm in a middle level beginning class with other foreigners who want to learn Chinese at a fast pace. My teachers have excellent teaching styles that make learning Chinese both fun and interesting. They are the archaeologists, dusting off my language, finding whole words and sentences patterns that were long ago buried. I am the only English speaker my the class, so from day 1, all communication between teachers, classmates and myself has been in Chinese only. In fact, most people at the school don't even know that I'm American, so they only speak to me in Chinese. On the first day, the only characters I recognized were the 45 new vocabulary words that were staring up at me, plus a handful of other common ones. I memorize that same amount every day, plus am remembering characters I thought I'd forgotten. It feels so good to be learning again. Coleman was sick yesterday, and I was surprised how disappointed I was to not go to class. Before, I learned to get a good grade. I see some of my classmates, now, fretting about upcoming tests. Now, I am learning because I want to and that alone has set me free.