Phil's Worldwide travel in 2023/2024

Well, I've finished up 8 weeks of intensive Mandarin. My classes were 1 on 1 except 1 week of group classes. I studied a ton and went to a lot of language exchanges. I still need to keep the momentum, as I feel I could easily start forgetting but I also feel I am just about at B1 level which is HSK3. Chat GPT would explain that this would usually take 18 months in University. One caveat being my reading ability is a bit behind as I focussed a more on speaking (using pingyin). I also feel I struggle a bit with listening, but this doesn't concern me too much I am just working on getting more input (podcasts and speaking with locals). The textbooks we and most schools use in Mandarin is from Taiwan Normal University. There are 4 levels, each with 3 books - I am starting level 3! I am now setting off to travel in Taiwan, although people do speak English in many places, I do feel a lot more comfortable having some Chinese as backup.  I also finished my 10 pingpong classes and defini

 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