David goes to China

I put some serious effort into learning to write a handful of characters at the weekend. Half an hour is my idea of serious effort, which was enough to get 8 characters, more or less. Repetition once through a couple of times later in the day re-inforced and I still had them the next day, pretty much. It was very helpful to learn the stroke order, and to feel the kinesthesia of doing it. Perhaps I can do this writing stuff...

Found a great site to help me learn Chinese characters -
http://flashcards.eur.com/hanzi-f.cfm?Lang=English&LangX=Hangeul&Mode=4
Great because it doesn't involve thinking. I just click the buttons and become magically infused with knowledge...

Another Chinese lesson yesterday. Two hours of trying to cram Mandarin into my head is too long and I'm not the only one; I see others in the class rubbing their foreheads and staring glassy-eyed into space after about 45 minutes.
How on earth do Chinese readers and writers memorise it all?
But we also learned the joys of Word (Sssssss!) in Chinese - and that is very very good.

Starting this blog in October, as I'm thinking about my trip to Beijing in March and a select group of people may wish to follow my progress while I'm over there. Initially, this blog will be more about learning the language.

Hello
Thanks
What's your name?
I'm called David
I have two
daughters

I've made a start on learning Mandarin. It's really quite tricky; I'm starting (just) to get the hang of speaking and listening a few basic phrases, and reading pinyin, but reading and writing Chinese characters seems like alien stamp collecting in the dark...

I need to find a suitable set of Chinese characters to represent my name.