Back to Class

I had my first of 20 Chinese lessons today.  Ironically enough, the school I am attending is called 'Miracle Mandarin.'  I am wondering if the name implies that it's a miracle if you learn Mandarin??

I decided that after living here over a year, I should at least try to learn a bit of the language and so spent two hours this morning being drilled on sounds and the dreaded tones. Ugh! Those are really, really hard for me to pick up ... but since depending on the tone, a word can have four different meanings, I guess they might be sort of important :)