Learning the Chinese Language

Last night was our first night of a 12-week course in learning Mandarin, otherwise known as standard Chinese. We'll first learn to speak a little and then dabble in writing. After our first class we were exhausted from trying to get the basic tones and pronounciations correct. Between the course and our Rosetta Stone subscription (http://www.rosettastone.com), we hope to at least be able to speak several key phrases and read a few Chinese characters.

We've already been practicing saying:

1. Hello,
2. Goodbye,
3. Thank you,
4. I love you,
5. We're going to the bar, and
6. Where's the restroom?

Here's a link to a fun website that has Chinese words and phrases for adoptive parents.

http://www.wku.edu/~yuanh/AudioChinese/parent.html