Jared decided he needed to challenge his mind a little more this year. What did he think would be super fun? Learning Mandarin. It was right up his ally of fun and excitement. He is the only kid in his school that has taken it in the last 3 years. The teacher that oversees his language doesn't know Mandarin so I'm not sure how she grades his notes- the class is online, but his notes have to be checked by a live person.
He is loving how hard it is and everyday he's got something new to tell me about what he's learning. Everyday he is also coming to me with the realization that this is going to be a lot harder than he thought. There is excitement in his eyes when he tells me how to know what each component of the characters mean that ultimately make up one word. He is loving it and I love that he has something to love. He's had to write a couple of songs and stories for the class and it's been fun. I got one of the songs stuck in my head- except I was just making up a bunch of gibberish because I didn't know the words.
After a semester of this language, I had a crazy thought. Maybe he would have even more fun if he could try and read The Book of Mormon in Mandarin. It was pretty confusing online trying to figure out what to order so I ended up ordering 2. One is completely in Hanzi which is the characters for Mandarin and the other is the language study edition. The study edition has 3 columns - english, hanzi and pinyin (the written word form of the language)
The books arrived in the mail today and he was pretty stoked. I keep reminding him that this is no guarantee that he will actually serve a mission in China for the church but he can enjoy the language and go there on his own. The other added bonus is that when China comes to collect their debts and it looks like we are playing out the movie Red Dawn - he will know what's going on. Wolverines!!! ;0)
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