Learning Mandarin Chinese

I have always wanted to learn another language but never found the right environment for it. I studied Spanish in high school and college but didn't learn or retain much. I have contemplated the idea of learning another language for a while and figured it needed to be done in an environment where there were plenty of opportunities to use it and really where using it was a requirement for survival. Taipei is such a place. Yes, you can make it without learning Chinese and many people in service jobs here speak and understand enough English for you to get by but that is the limit. You are just getting by. You can't participate in much that is available or make any local friends unless they speak English, or whatever your native language is, well. Unfortunately, I have met westerners who have lived here for 5, 10, even 20 years and they can barely speak enough to order a cup of coffee.

I decided this would be a good opportunity to take another crack at learning a language and so far I think it was a great choice. I enrolled in an intensive mandarin class at National Taiwan Normal University's Mandarin Training Center. It is one of the oldest, largest and most well known MTCs in the world. My class meets 3 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 12 weeks and we have about 3-4 hours of homework assigned per night. It is a lot of work considering I'm also taking classes for my MBA and am studying to take level one of the CFA in June but well worth it. My teacher is great and my classmates are all nice and good people to work with. I have been in classes for 3 weeks now and feel that the class is moving at a good pace. I wish I had a full year to study so I could learn a lot more but I might just have to continue my studies in the States. The great thing about studying here is that I learn things in class that I hear everyday on the street and have an opportunity everyday to test out what I've learned in class on real people. This will be much harder to do outside of a Mandarin speaking country.