Congratulations Mark! Most of my language study was with Zhao Laoshi, but we did have one semester together. I have always remembered your kind and generous nature, and one particularly valuable language gift you gave to me. As a beginning student I was still struggling with when and when not to add the particle “le” at the end of a sentence or after a verb phrase: none of the “rules” I had been given seemed to quite do the job. Your answer was simple: don’t worry about it, just move on and eventually it will be natural for you. So true! To this day, I often repeat this same advice to colleagues struggling to learn this difficult language. I have since spent the last twenty years living and working in Shanxi, and I often remember you as an example of how to study, use, teach and even love the languages of China. Blessings in whatever comes next for you!