Restarting classes

Monday was the first time I'd been in class since I left Uni. As part of my career experimentation, I decided to try out the insurance industry. Prudential are trying to recruit me and they have been spending a lot of effort and time in explaining my career opportunites with them. After countless of meetings with one of their managers, they gave me the opportunity to take up classes with them as a training exercise. It all seemed like a brilliant idea until I found out that the classes are taught in chinese. As much as I consider myself to be fluent in the language, I have never attended formal classes in Cantonese and therefore my understanding of business terms and industry specific terms are minimal to say the least.

By Tuesday, I couldn't take it anymore and had to leave halfway through the day. I even contemplated about staying since I actually went back after the lunch break but I couldn't make myself do it.

So now it's Wednesday and I am still sitting at home while class started almost an hour ago. The strange thing was that while I woke up and did everything in time to leave the house, I felt an astonishing reluctance to do so. The group who are trying to recruit me just called to check if I was in class. I told them I had something to follow through and will be there later in the afternoon. In all honesty, I'm finding it very hard to concentrate in class. If it weren't for the textbook, I would never know what is truly going on. Even the presentation which the lecturer used as well as the lecture slides were all in Chinese. I'd never felt so out of my element. On one hand, I could vaguely understand what she was saying since she used examples to help the class along but on the otherhand, it was easy to mix up the examples for the different topics.

It's truly awful - my incompetence in Chinese. It's no big secret that China is the up and coming, even Westerners have been taking classes to do business in this region and here I am, a sitting duck in a city closest to China with absolutely minimal language skills. One thing is for sure - it needs to be sorted... fast.