New Langauge Fail!

I was totally prepared to learn basic Mandarin (level 1 A) this year considering, I only had to pay $50.00 (as a full time student my tuition was subsidised ). However, I was not prepared to pay $600.00 for the textbook set. Yikes! Anyway, in August I signed up, paid my fees ($50.00), attended class religiously for one-month and one-week, did my homework, spent time in the language lab working on my grasp of the tones but then I went cold turkey. The classes were for four months (September to December), two-days per week, two- hours long and they were quite entertaining. I learned some interesting facts about China, seeing that the tutor was from China.

To my surprise Chinese (Mandarin) was not as hard as I initially perceived; as long as you get the four tones correct you should be fine (minus the characters, now that is challenging). It is quite a lazy language (no disrespect intended), I say this because most words are rather short and my tutor did say Chinese are always shortening long words.  

I stopped attending classes for a few reasons:

1) I found it challenging to follow and stay committed since I did not have the textbook, audio CD and workbook, which was used religiously.

2) My schedule changed, it became free and hectic as the months progressed. In October, I was based in a School Nutrition establishment and I would finish 'work'  early and reach home by 1 pm. To be honest, I found it really hard to get back out the house for my 5:00 pm class. As a result, I missed a good few classes (25 per cent) and I was automatically dropped. 

Nevertheless, I will re-try the class again in 2013. Seeing that I will have to pay the full tuition plus the registration fee, which is a great incentive to do well and stick to it because I cannot afford to be wasting money. However, I believe I will be better off taking the one-day, four-hour class instead of the two-day, two-hour classes because one day a week is more practical than two days a week. It may be long but it will beat going to class so late in the afternoon.