chinese thus far...

well, it's taken awhile for me to start posting (other than being lazy, blogs are blocked by the chinese government, so i also had to learn how to get around that) but here i go. we just finished our third week of classes, and chinese is definitely picking up.  last week we started learning characters which is pretty difficult.  so far i know how to say things like, "hello, my name is amanda,"(你好。我叫 Amanda。) and "what is your honorable surname?" (您贵姓？) however, i really think we need to be learning how to order food and bargain. until we start studying those things in class, learning the pinyin and characters for things such as "pork" and "bok choy" will have to be top priority. wish me luck.