Why did I wait so long?

So, I'm loving my Mandarin course. Things I thought were going to be ridiculously hard haven't been so far. I love learning languages. I really should have done this such a long time ago.

Don't worry, the novelty will soon wear off and I'll started posting about topics other than Mandarin. Anyway...

I think I'm not bad at word attack, word recall, and the meta-game. For example, the instructor pointed to his nose and asked the class what type of nose (bizi) it was. I had no idea what he was getting at but I came up with the answer he was fishing for - mostly by luck. I've only encountered about 50-100 words, and I figured he must be looking for one of them. So I sorted through my adjectives (which are a small proportion of my vocabulary) and said out loud the only one that came to mind - da bizi (big nose). His wasn't even a large nose. But hey, you can call a nose big, right? He was so pleased and asked if anyone had ever called me da bizi. No, I've never heard of this before. Apparently, this is a reference to white people (makes sense). I also know that America (Meiguo) translates roughly as beautiful country so maybe one could call a nose mei but big definitely seems like the better answer.

I've had to ask one of my students for help with my homework once, which was an interesting moment/role reversal. I asked him to keep this Mandarin thing to himself. One, I'd be humiliated to respond if a native speaker wanted to hear me speak, which I can assume s/he very well might. Two, I want to be able to eavesdrop surrepticiously. Three, I don't want my admin or guidance to know or I'll spend hours talking to parents.

On a related note, the topic of mahjong came up in one of my classes today. I told the story of Tiffany's purchase of my contraband set and confessed that I play pretty poorly - my inlaws usually relieve me of my money when we play. To say the least, the class was very amused. I wonder how far the cuteness of a foreigner will take one?

Also, our instructor is really into language as culture, culture as language. And I do find those things interesting, too, but a part of me just wants him to get on with it give us speaking drills and feedback. You can never get a short straight answer on anything with any cultural implication at all, e.g., which title to use for a stranger of a certain sex who is clearly older/younger than you are). It always depends - where are you? where is the stranger from? how long has it been since s/he lived in China? how educated is s/he? But I'm thinking this culture focus is a good thing. Any Mandarin-speak to whom I've mentioned this has a quick and positive response to this description of the instructor. I'm just so pragmatic about most things. I figure that my appearance is going to let me get away with all kinds of minor or even major breaches of protocol.