community college vs. the real thing

Earlier this summer I decided that I needed to enrich my learning with a new language and started taking Cantonese classes at CCSF (City College of San Francisco) aka community college. We've had three classes already (each class is 3 1/2 hours long) and we're still on the LESSON ONE, learning greetings (Hi, how are you? My name is Johnny, what is your name?) and counting (123, 321, 1234567). Yes, I did take three years of Mandarin, and yes, Cantonese isn't really brand spanking new to me, but please. It doesn't take 10 class hours to learn "1, 2, 3" and "how are you?"! According to the syllabus, we have a total of 8 lessons to learn in the scheduled 16 classes we'll have. My calculations say that we're either going to fall behind or we'll have to start picking up the speed.

Anyhow, this is really only my second class at CCSF. Last year I took a painting class, and it was a lot more challenging since I really don't have any talent. I guess I was expecting to learn A LOT of Cantonese in one class, since we only have class once a week. I guess you can't expect much when classes only cost $26 a credit (3 credits for this class), compared to the ginormous price tag I paid for a private college ($32,000 a year, approx. $4,000 per class).

We'll have our first quiz next week. It'll cover numbers, greetings and tones. Whoop-de-doo. I think I'll watch "House of Flying Daggers" to prepare for it. Darn it, I only have the Mandarin version.

Joi Gin (Cantonese for "Good bye")