Hello everyone, 大家好！I just wanted to share my unique and funny dream to you guys. Yesterday I was exhausted so I spent more time to scroll down on my italki mobile app. It's been a long time since the last time I book a lesson. I'm currently working on my thesis and apparently there must be a sacrifice in order to finish such a big task. Having a break on my Chinese learning is one of my sacrifices. Yesterday I was accidentally fell asleep in the afternoon for about 35-45 minutes. In the dream I was having a Chinese speaking class. I vividly remember that I was so happy to finally reunited with my Chinese learning journey. My teacher asked me "how are you feeling today?" I answered "I'm good, thanks" But she asked me again, "No, I asked you how are you feeling? Like are you doing okay or is there something bother you right now?" Oh God I was very touched and I tried my best to explain how I feel during these past few weeks. All was well until I reach one word that I suppose to know but I just couldn't get it right. I was about to say "anxious" in Chinese. But I completely forgot! I was thinking so hard, extremely hard until I finally woke up from my sleep! Then I decided to just give myself a 30 minute conversation lesson with my new teacher on italki and I can say I just found out the best teacher I've ever had (budget and teaching style) 😭❤️ I also decided to tell her about this story for our first class. I personally really enjoy to custom my own material so I made this PowerPoint and sent it to my teacher so that she can take a look before the class. I'm so happy🥰

I started italki literally at the first period of the pandemic. And look what I got on my birthday! Spending my time with my tutor and a letter from my student (or I can say my good friend!) This is exactly what I want to participate in this community. Learning language is indeed a passion of mine but more than that, the connection, having a real conversation with the real people, and if we're lucky, we can find our best match. I'm so grateful for this opportunity to get to know that we're not alone in this time. I also love to hear about my student's national holiday or culture celebration. It makes me feel like there's no "bad" day, everyday is our lucky day and it's always a good day for us to chase our dreams🤗 Selamat ulang tahun, happy birthday, 生日快乐，Alles Gute zum Geburtstag italki❤️

Studying Chinese has always been one of my favourite things to do when I have got some free time. Although I don't really spend a lot of time to do that because I'm doing my final year in university right now, but I'm so glad that I found a method that really suits with my goal right now. I want to share this to the community because I feel this could be beneficial to whoever learn a new language, typically the non-latin language. 1) Make it simple I used to use a lot of colour pen in my language notes. Turns out, I learn better when it's only black and white colour on my paper 2) Make a BIG notes I'm glad that I found this method. I always struggled to finish my Chinese book. I think the problem is not only about the lack of vocabulary that I have, but also about the colour from the book. Whilst novel is still waaay beyond my level, so hopefully one day I can make it. But honestly, I love this method. I just rewrite it on my notebook in the huge font and I can memorize more. And writing has a therapeutic effect too so it helps me a lot when I need to calm my nerves when doing my thesis consultation :) 3) Shadowing My man, I never hate this method since I was a kid (with English). For Chinese, I'd rather to immerse myself with the celebrity's LIVE and short interview to get an authentic way of conversation 4) Invest (time and money) I don't really have a lot of money to be able to book a lesson weekly, but I can afford it once or twice a month sometimes. So I always try to invest in my time more before the class. Really trying my best to being prepared with some questions because I know it's not easy for me to book a class :) I'm glad that I can also find a really good Chinese teacher with such a good match with me (price & personality) here. Huge thanks italki! 5) Learn from textbook I've got a lot of help from textbook too! Thank God that I found a really good Chinese textbook which is so helpful. It helps me a lot to understand the grammar and boost my vocab

I'm not a parent yet, but I wanted to share a bit about my experience. I have a nephew who's just 4-5 years old. And his mum was already forced him to dig into Chinese and German class. He studies in the international school and use English in his daily conversation. Back home, he needs to speak Indonesian and a bit of Javanese with his grand mother. One day, I saw him really confused to even say a one sentence. I could see his confusion clearly. He enjoyed both his Chinese and German class, but he's still confused to put all of them together and interact with his family. From this experience, I think it's best to introduce maximum 3 languages in the early age. And 2 of them needs to be immersed daily to the kids. I can see that it's still not too beneficial for him at his recent age.

In my country, we have a lot of local languages. In fact, we have to learn one of them based on what province we live in our school curriculum from elementary to senior high school. I live in Java province, so I learn Javanese at school. However, my family is from Bali, which is the different province with a different local language as well. And it also has some uncommon dialects (for me). To be honest, it's hard for me to find motivation to learn my language heritage because all of us can understand Bahasa Indonesia. But growing up, I can understand the importance of learning the local language or I can say my heritage language. It's to maintain the connection between my ancestors and I. I look deeper into the benefits and avoid the "business" advantage. I changed my trajectory and finally decided to learn it (although I spent more time on my foreign language learning), but small progress is still a progress. I believe that even we can communicate in our native language, there's a lot of stuff that could be described better in how local people speak. For me, learning an endangered dialect is not only about keeping the language alive. But also the connection with our ancestors and where we're from💛

I haven't had any international trip before, but I can share one of the most emotional experiences that I have :) It was in 2018 when I had a group project held by my university. We needed to travel to another city. My uni is located in one of the biggest and modern city in my country so we went to the rural area. Actually it's still in the same province, but I can say it wasn't easy to adapt in the new environment. I don't know if you know but Indonesia is a multicultural country, which one of the things I love the most for being an Indonesian because I love diversity. We had a green project, creative project with kids, taught some lessons at school, and Gosh, a musical project too! I guess we only needed 3 days to adjust and interact with the local people because they're just too kind and super friendly. I remember that we did our project in the morning - afternoon, while for the evening, we visited at least 5-8 houses because the local people were waiting for our visit. They were very welcome to us and one of my tips is don't eat anything if you want to visit the locals. Because they will give you a lot of food and asked you to have dinner together. What a lovely and relax environment. It feels nice to sometimes escape from our fast and ambitious world to slow down a little bit and experience kindness along the way. You're good enough :)