Chinese 311

I added a Chinese conversation class last minute this semester.  This is one of those classes that is different every semester and could really go either way, depending on the people in the class and more than that who is teaching and how they decide to set the class up.  So yesterday was my first time attending the class, and from the looks of it I'm going to enjoy the class.  At the beginning of class, she asked me to introduce myself and as I'm introducing myself I say that I served my mission in Taiwan.  Before I continue, you must understand something about Chinese.  Well, for one, there are tons of dialects, which greatly affect your accent (for native speakers) when speaking Mandarin.  The accent that people in Taiwan have isn't exactly hard to understand, but because they don't curl their tongue when they should, it has a tendency to sound almost as if you have a lisp.  Some missionaries, in an attempt to sound more like the people they served with, over compensate for this and just sound ridiculous.  Even those who don't overcompensate have a tendency to pick up at least a little bit of the Taiwanese accent.  Ever since I started learning Chinese, I have wanted to have accurate Chinese.  Of course, there are some things that I say that are obviously the Taiwanese pronunciation and other things that show I clearly learned Chinese in Taiwan, but that isn't the accent I wanted to pick up.  So I have worked hard to have good, accurate Chinese.  Ok, back to my class.  When I said that I served in Taiwan, my teacher didn't quite believe me.  She said, "Really?  Then why don't you sound like someone from Taiwan?!"  I take that as a compliment, a big one.  Nothing against Taiwan or the Taiwanese people, but my goal is to have accurate standard Mandarin.  It really made my day.  The rest of the class went really well too.  There were multiple times when the teacher talked about some of those consistent mistakes in pronunciation people with a Taiwanese accent and how they really just bug the crap out of her, thus reinforcing how much I appreciated the compliment she gave me earlier.  There were some people who would intentionally say things the wrong way because they thought it was funny, I thought it was about as funny as my teacher did: Not at all.  It was just obnoxious.  Anyway, aside from that, the class is really going to be a lot of fun.  Our only homework is once every couple of classes we have to make a recording of ourselves talking telling a story or whatever using the vocabulary words from that day's lesson.  We will have a vocabulary quiz every once in a while as well, but basically, that's it.  Oh, and we have to do peer reviews of their recordings as well.  But I'm excited.  It's going to be a fun class.  I'm kind of going to be in Chinese mode a lot this semester, which is more than ok by me!  But I have 3 Chinese classes this semester and I couldn't be more excited about it!