学习普通话 (Learning Chinese)

I've been thinking about this trip for a long time.  I've done a lot of travelling in the past, but usually only for a couple of weeks, and I've never been able to speak the local language, so have stuck pretty closely to the "Gringo Trail".

For my China trip, I'm going for almost 3 months, and I've been studying the language for over 2 years.  I spent a year trying to learn Mandarin on my own, and finally came across Pimsleur tapes (which IMHO is the best learn-on-your-own program out there).  After completing the 3 levels of Pimsleur Mandarin, I signed up with an online school in Xi'An China (http://www.echineselearning.com/), and I've been doing 2 hours per week via Skype since last January.

In China, I'm going to spend my first 2 weeks at Hutong School (http://www.hutong-school.com/) doing an intensive Chinese program, and I've found schools in Xi'An, Chengdu and Kunming where I can get one-on-one tutoring during my travels.

Chinese is hard!!! 

It's a "tonal" language.  (妈妈骂马吗？ mama ma ma ma?  Is mother scolding the horse?) 

There are thousands of characters to learn.  The characters group together to form words, which sometimes have no relationship to the individual characters.  (火车 "huoche" "fire car" means "train", but 东西 "dongxi" "East West" means "thing".  Go figure!)

The grammar is completely different.  (我今年打算去中国旅行。I this year plan go China vacation.)

The "sounds" are different than English.  (雪 xue snow and 水 shui water sound pretty much the same, and even use the same tone!) 

There are "traditional" and "simplified" versions of the characters, not to mention the "pinyin" or romanized version.

I think I've gotten to the point where I can book a hotel room and order noodles.  Asking for directions is going to be a bit iffy. 

请慢说一点儿。我就是加拿大人!  Speak a bit more slowly, please.  I'm only Canadian!