Isaak:

Month 1: Last September, I was deep into my math undergrad. It was pretty dry. I was looking for some fun non-math side project. I flirted with French, Russian, archery, parkour, and Japanese. But those didn’t ignite my passion. I happened to watch a snippet of the anime Demon Slayer in an obscure Chinese fan dub. Ironically, this caught my attention. I also had lots of Chinese friends, so why not learn a little Mandarin? Oh my, I had no idea how obsessed I’d end up with this “little” side project.

Berkeley had a breakneck-speed Mandarin beginner class. I loved it. Within a week, we learned pinyin. We learned the tones. We learned to read. We learned to write. Then started talking immediately, every single day. Talking in horribly horribly broken Chinese, but nevertheless having conversations. I learned the very most important survival vocabulary, like: I am Isaak and Yes, I live in America and Sorry, no, I’m not a basketball player for the Golden State Warriors.