I just got back from my first Chinese lesson. There are four of us from KAS: me, another teacher (Nancy, who I went with to the British Consulate on Saturday), the elementary/middle school principal, and the wife of the superintendent. The teacher, Yumin, is young, enthusiastic, and clearly teaches English often. She was recommended by a number of colleagues who are taking classes from her.

To get to the classroom we walked through a restaurant into the kitchen and up two narrow flights of stairs. The stairs were nearly blocked by oil cans and open bags of rice and flour from the restaurant. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of restaurants that store their ingredients in as unsanitary conditions as this place, but I'd rather not know.

Yumin has developed the curriculum for the class based on the language she thinks is most useful when living in Taiwan. We learned the four tones, the pronunciation of some of the easiest consonants and vowels and some useful sentences:

nihoa, wo jiao Wendy, ni ne? (Hello, my name is Wendy, what's your name?)
keyi he pijiu ma? (Can I drink some beer?)
ni hen pi (You are naughty.)

I can see that this class is going to be very useful.