My husband and I went to our first Conversational Chinese class last night, and we are going to learn more than conversation including some reading and some writing of Chinese characters. The teacher is a young woman from China, and her enthusiasm and encouragement are contagious. She believes we can do this, so I'm willing to suspend my own disbelief and charge ahead. My husband and I have actually been working for many months on learning to speak some Mandarin Chinese using CDs that our son loaned us. He's learning Chinese as well, but he has a wife who speaks it so he has an advantage we are lacking. We have good motivation, however, as our daughter-in-law is speaking Chinese to our baby suinzi (that's our grandson). We want to be able to understand him when he starts babbling. Hopefully we can learn enough to learn along with him when he starts talking.
As we headed out for class last night, I remembered something I'd not thought about in years and that is that my husband and I met as freshmen in college over 40 years ago. Standing in the bookstore line this morning waiting to buy the textbook for the class, I told my husband I had never pictured myself going back to college as a grandmother. Life does have a way of circling around upon itself, and God does have a wonderfully, wacky sense of humor. Even if I had thought about returning to school someday back when I was a college student, I would never in my wildest dreams have envisioned signing up for Chinese lessons!
But now I get to have two nights a week back at college with my college sweet heart, who's the only one who calls me Donna Sue. What a blessing, and something to make my heart sing an old almost-forgotten song.
Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue
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