First Official Chinese Classes

I am currently at the university here in Barbados for a science programme. Even though the programme is geared towards creating scientists we have to take a humanities class, an entrepreneurship class and a Mandarin class.
The Mandarin classes are three sessions weekly for three weeks. This week we learned the different tones and some basic introductory phrases. Most of it I knew already from my failed attempt to self study Mandarin and with obvious help from Taiwanese drama.
Today we had to introduce ourselves to the class. My introduction was quite short but I concentrated on getting the tones correct. The others tried getting more information about themselves while I only used what was taught in class. I seemed kinda lazy... welll...anyhow my presentation was successful and I was the only person to get an applause .*blushes* Trying to get the correct tones made me sound more native. I was so proud of myself. Maybe I will restart learning Mandarin.....
***  Sometimes people describe second tone as a question being asked, but thinking of it like that it was hard for me to apply to a word. I went over the second tone sound in my head and realised it more specifically sounded like "Why?" (well at least how I say "why" with my accent .It is more broken into two (why-i-)than just (y) ). Then I remembered hearing something similar it was from Learn Chinese with YangYang but she used "what" instead.

Was that a joke??

I was talking to my friend from Guadeloupe on Skype using the voice call feature. Most times we just speak English so she can improve  and also because when we first "met" I was not studying French.
The last two times though she encouraged me to try my French. She was telling me a story about her experience with some delicious Chinese food. The story's ending was to be a joke. Instead of the story having a climatic ending, it just fell flat. Why? I did not understand. I felt so bad. It takes alot of effort to tell a joke and at the end of she did not get the response she was looking for. She was laughing and when she realised I wasn't laughing she asked " Tu as compris?" Unfortunately I had to say "Non". The second attempt though was a successful one. I understood.
Moral of the post- It is risky telling a language learner a joke.

Irregular Verbs in French

When I was learning French at school I don't really remember there being so many types of verbs. I decided to start from the beginning when it comes to verbs since i took a two-year break from learning French. It is really alot to remember.*sigh*
                    
                     The Types
Regular -er, -ir and -re verbs
The -cer and -ger verbs where there is a change in the nous form e.g
commençons / mangeons
The verbs where you have to use a grave accent with the silent endings e.g acheter ------> j'achète
The verbs where you double the last consonant in the stem for the silent endings
e.g appeler-----> je m'appelle
The -vaincre verbs which must use   -qu for the plural endings
e.g convaincre -----> convainquent
The -ir verbs which are conjugated like -er verbs
e.g ouvrir-----> j'ouvre
The -ir verbs conjugated like -re verbs
e.g partir-----> je pars
The -oindre, -eindre and -aindre verbs
The -uire verbs
There is still more. I seriously need to find a way to remember these. Practising them using sentences is probably the best way. This is going to take a while but Aja Aja Fighting!!