There has always been something drawing me to languages. I find learning and practicing them to be so much fun!! I was fortunate enough to have spent my first 2.5 years in China; the exposure at such a young age made it possible to keep Chinese in a separate part of my brain from the “foreign language” part. Though English has become my mother tongue, I feel very comfortable with Chinese (Mandarin). I wasn’t sent to Chinese school and my parents didn’t make it a point to speak it exclusively at home. But I was close to my relatives and visited every few years, as well as picked up manga (Japanese comic) books written in Chinese to teach myself how to read and write. I was very motivated and didn’t understand how other Chinese-Americans did not care to learn about and represent their culture.

In middle/high school, I took French classes, then Japanese in college, and unfortunately found that the two conflicted with each other whenever I tried to recall words. I am not gifted in this area by any means, but I work hard at it! I’m now trying to add on Spanish via Duolingo and Rosetta Stone. It might seem like a suicide mission, but I swear I WILL one day be able to converse in all 5 languages!

I wish there was a job where I could just draw and practice languages all day. Oh wait…how about as a language teacher who uses cartoons to teach?! I’ve always loved finding fun ways to present boring material. The Magic School Bus was one of my favorites for this reason. I didn’t realize until much later that that is why I loved it so much. It wasn’t about the science material at all!

Anyway, I recently bought myself a tablet as a residency graduation/holiday present, and I thought I’d find an excuse to put it to good use. So, I created MonkMan, to help people all over the world learn Chinese with comics! Each week he’ll post at least one lesson, starting today! As these posts get lost with the pile, you can always find all his lessons in the “Learn Chinese” tab from the menu.

Without further ado, here is his first lesson! Rest of the story was condensed onto ONE PAGE HERE!

I started uploading some of my drawings over the years into a digital portfolio (accessible from the menu tab).I haven’t been the most careful and have lost so many things in computer crashes, careless misplacement of flash drives, C.D.s, and yes! floppy disks, and even misplaced my giant portfolio folder from high school/college days (I don’t know how!! I did move around frequently…Perhaps I lost it in a lone basement somewhere?). So I figured digitally keeping copies is probably the best way to go. If you happen to have any drawings of mine, please send them my way! Thank you!!

My favorite Chinese-English dictionary: www.nciku.com

Full Story/Index of All Lessons/Pages of
Learn Chinese with Comics, The Adventures of MonkMan!