Phil's Worldwide travel in 2023/2024

 So although things about my life may seem monotonous, I am really starting to break through with Mandarin. It's been very interesting seeing some people who I had seen on week one, where I could hardly talk, and now being able to have conversations. My reading is still lagging a bit behind but I feel with a relatively large vocab, reviewing characters is making a lot of sense. I still spend a large portion of the day reviewing new vocab, grammar, and then going to a language exchange in the evening about 3-4 days per week. I did also see a baseball game in Taiwan (our team the Monkeys won). They have a very interesting cheerleading squad that does dances that lots of the audience knows.  I have also continued along with my pinpong, my coach set me up to play a 10 yo girl... who actually beat me! I feel really good about the classes because I'm learning how to return all sorts of spins that I never really paid attention to. Finally, I saw some standup comedy the other day... it

 Long time no post. I have busy studying lots of Mandarin. I feel I have almost passed the rough patch of language learning.  I am now mostly familiar with making most sounds (some still give me some difficulties but I know what I need to work on). My vocab is probably in the 700 word range. I am familiar with lots of basic grammar (but needed to speak it more). As some teachers are away, I did have two group classes this week, it surely reminded me to continue with private as I can go at a much faster pace. I continue workout quite regularly and also did sign up for Ping-Pong lessons - first one was today and it was fantastic. I definitely need to work on getting rid of some bad habits but the rally with the couch was another level, who knew a few tips could do so much! Although, I when I scoped out the club, I had a rally with a 67 yo female who had a serve I just couldn't return.  Learning Mandarin has had its challenges. To name a few: Taiwan Mandarin isn't the same as Chin

Starting week 2 intensive Mandarin. Although I am still plowing away at memorizing words and characters, I am becoming more familiar with more complex words, they are starting to roll off the tongue. Like Bianlishandian - which is convenience store. Today is Tuesday and I did my second group class. I have decided to go back to group classes when week, although it is a lot more intensive, I think this makes sense until I can get to a more conversational level.  There are loads of apps, write now I am working with Pleco (an amazing dictionary), Skritter, a great about for learning characters, Chinese Class 101 -  a good course to supplement my in classroom learning. I also did my first language exchange from someone I met in one of the language exchange events. Most days there are opportunities to practice Mandarin but with limited words. When learning Mandarin, most people outside of Taiwan will learn Pinyin, it uses the English alphabet to guide pronunciation, and then will have tones

 Today is Friday April 26th, and I have finished my first week! It's been tough but my experience with learning Spanish and beginner Japanese has definitely been helpful. I actually find quite a few similarities between Mandarin and Japanese which makes the grammar a lot easier to accept. For example, the idea of something existing when wanting to ask someone if they carry or have it, i.e. instead of "do you guys have a washroom" they would say "does a washroom exist". I have been pretty sick the whole week other than today which did make things rough, waking up at strange hours, unable to sleep, coughing throughout class. However, I also had nothing to do but study which is good. My studying consists of: 1. vocab building, I have a great app (Pleco) which allows me to do flashcards in all sorts of fashion.  2. Pronunciation,  listen and repeat exercises, watching youtube videos on how to pronounce. 3. Listening, an app that says a word and you have to guess its