Subverting expectations is so satisfying
I'm a Mexican immigrant in Alabama and grew up here. It wasn't until 2022 when I decided to perfect my Spanish as a heritage speaker and learn Portuguese. Then when I got pretty fluent in Portuguese, I began learning Mandarin in Oct 2023.
It's now been over 2.5 years/1050 hours logged. I've been to China too! (Last July 2025). Anyway, I went to visit family in Birmingham, and we went to a Chinese restaurant. I didn't use my Mandarin at first, but when my brothers and I sat down, they asked why I didn't. I took it as a challenge and used it when the waitress came. (My brothers had never seen this irl) so they were shocked. The waitress was also super surprised since you'd never expect a random Mexican to know Chinese 😂. She got super happy and excited and asked a lot of questions. My brother also said some other Mexican customers behind me were flabbergasted I could speak Chinese as well and just stared.
Stuff like this just makes me even more motivated to keep going. It's the best feeling - pulling out an ability that no one would expect you to have 😂. I could understand and be understood in the entire convo with the Chinese waitress, and I felt really happy. Right now I can usually understand and read 80%-85% of general topics in Chinese. Last year in June, that was around maybe 45-55%. I've been grinding out the practice, taking two lessons a week of pure conversational practice too.
Anyway, I was just super happy. I also got a Rednote account where I only post in Chinese Mandarin and have nearly 3k followers. It's been very rewarding learning the language!
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via Learn Online English Speaking
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