My name is Jorge Durán, and I’m a student at Lord Byron School in Lima, Peru. Five years ago, when the school year started, our school’s director introduced us to a new faculty member: our Chinese teacher. Everybody was surprised to learn this news. We thought that it would be very hard to learn this language and we would do poorly on exams.

In our first Chinese class, all of us were very excited, but nervous at the same time, to learn Chinese. We were astonished at our first glimpse of what Chinese characters looked like; we didn’t understand anything! As the school year went by, we realized that learning this new language was actually much easier than we had originally thought. In fact, perhaps it was easier than other languages. In our Chinese class we learned not only about the language, but also about Chinese culture. To promote Chinese culture, our teacher organized activities such as dances and Chinese sword displays.

Learning Chinese at our school is now even easier since ADOC established an ADOC eSchool. At the center we can learn Chinese with the help of technology. We practice typing “pin-yin”, and can expand our vocabulary with the help of the internet and specialized software. With the aid of computers, I can now understand sentences more easily during writing exercises. Now I’m able to type directly into the computer and quickly capture the meaning of the sentences.

On behalf of the students at Lord Byron School, I would like to thank the ADOC project. I am very happy to have the opportunity to learn the beautiful Chinese language and realize how important it will be to know this language in the future.