Calligraphy 101

We decided that it would be fun to take Mandarin classes "en famille" once a week and it is but we are all having a hard time getting beyond Nihao (hello) and other basic phrases. The thing is that Mandarin is so different from any other language that we know, so we struggle to remember our phrases from one week to the next. During the week, the kids and I have fun testing our very basic Mandarin with the very friendly cashier of our local Cold Storage. This Saturday our teacher introduced us to basic calligraphy skills and basically it's just as complicated as our Mandarin 101, except maybe for our in-house artist Rose.