Small Baby Steps

It's been awhile, but I started my first Biblical Greek lesson today. I have scheduled 3-5pm, monday thru friday for language learning classes, self taught, and tuesday is bilical greek day. once I get further along, I will start to add more time. for now, two hours once a week is a good pace. mandarin of course, gets more time than the others since I'm going to China. it is 4:39pm, and I'm writing this post as part of my lesson. I am not very frustrated but I can tell that biblical greek will be the toughest language for me out of all the ones I'm learning. In none of the other languages do I have to learn the alphabet and also how individual letters are pronounced. in mandarin, you can learn the individual pyngin letters but its almost easier to learn the tones and then just start learning the whole words, and once you do that you start to get comfortable with the sounds. and italian and french are...easy for me. but with biblical greek, there is no other to learn it. I have to learn the alphabet, I have to learn the indivudual letter sounds and it is a bit...challenging. I am very thankful to have the resources I have, yet I can already tell that just learning the alphabet and its sounds is gonna take awhile. in italian, i can already say several words, and count to 20, and know several colors, and french...it's just re-learnign what I learned in high school so its coming back fast, and mandarin is a challange but in terms of learning as much vocabulary and conversational skills as possible. Greek is...tough. i do not like having to learn individual sounds of the letters, and i just want to be able to jump right into words and phrases like with the other languages I am learning. yet it is obvious that that is not an option. I have lectures from Bill Mounce from his DVD series that I bought and from "greek for the rest of us" book and CD-ROM(also by Bill Mounce) and he is a good lecturer and seems to really know Greek and is very passionate about it and about teaching it. his website has a lot of free resources and that DVD lecture is a whole first year of greek lectures. so I am still excited and commited to this, but i am grateful that I am self taught and so can take my time and not have to cram a ton of stuff in. If it takes a year to learn the alphabet and its sounds, so be it. still, i dont want it to take a year. I guess it's frustrating having to go baby step at a time, small steps. but it's gonna be worth it when I can read the NT in its original language and can say that I taught myself.