Uh Oh... Homework on the first day!

This morning at 8am Bill and I attended our first Mandarin lesson.  Holy smokes that was a really hard 2 hours AND we have homework on the first day!!!  

When we first arrived in Suzhou I was hellbent that I was going to learn Mandarin as soon as possible.  Given the fact that I don't have a job anymore or children I feet the need to keep my mind busy with something important and learning Mandarin is definitely a survival/life skill here in China!  I basically called the first company I found on a google search which happened to be New Concept Mandarin.  They set-up a consultation/orientation meeting with me to go over their teaching techniques/methods and to give me quotes.  Apparently this isn't for everyone!  So about 4 weeks ago I had the orientation meeting and Bill came with me as he was intrigued, we walked through the program with Jenny the manager and then we had a 20 minute lesson where we learned numbers 1 - 10.  It's taken a few weeks to get approval and work out a schedule as we were waiting for visa information and work meetings kept getting in the way with Bill's schedule but today we finally started!  Bill and I are going to joint private classes and our schedule will consist of Mondays from 8am to 10am and Fridays from 3pm to 5pm.  I feel like I may be  drinking heavily on Friday evenings as Mandarin is HARD!  

My brain was spinning this morning.  I'm not sure if it's the fact that it was Monday at 8am or if my brain was just shocked that it actually had to be used!  We started with a refresher on the numbers and then we practiced sentences asking for a person's phone number and giving a phone number.  It's not even been 8 hours since that lesson and I feel that I have already forgotten every single word we learned!

The funny part of this homework is Zoey told us to ask 3 of our Chinese friends for their phone numbers.  As we walked out of class Bill says to me "HA!  I'll have my homework done at the end of today.  Good luck to you!"  I'm guessing he was giggling because I don't have 3 Chinese friends, I only have expat friends at this point and he has many Chinese co-workers that he can ask.  I'm not worried, I will ask some of the expats who have taken Chinese lessons, I just need to remember the words to ask them!!!