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But first, there is a bit of catching up to do.
Exactly 0ne year, 5 months, and 2 days ago, I started the process of learning Chinese. Why Chinese? Well, one day, I was bored after school, and like any person who is properly bored nowadays, I was surfing on the internet. In a crucial, random moment of fate, I clicked on an ad for Rosetta Stone, explored the website, and saw that they had a trial lesson for Mandarin Chinese. I was intrigued... after all, isn't Chinese one of the most difficult languages? So, I started the lesson, guided by the automatic features and slick interface of Rosetta Stone, and after 20 minutes, realized that Chinese was like any other language. I mean, sure, it has that strange "tones" issue (where if you say a word while raising your pitch, it means something different than saying that exact same word with a lowering pitch), but after the trial lesson, I knew how to say "The boy runs", and "The girls sit", and understood what the different parts of the sentences meant....suddenly, Chinese seemed like a very real possibility.
And I ran with it.
Slowly, I began to tell people that I wanted to learn Chinese, and I checked-out a few websites about Chinese... Oh, and let's not forget wikipedia! (speaking of wiki, I donated $5 during their last fund-drive).
But I was poor, too poor to afford Rosetta Stone... Difficulty can breed ingenuity. So of course, I downloaded an illegal copy of Rosetta Stone, through a popular peer-to-peer filesharing network (In a hypocritic stance, I don't suggest other people do this). Et Viola! I was in business.
Or so I thought.
I, a language enthusiast (tried to learn arabic on my own too :P, and speaking passable Spanish), realized that I needed some sort of a manual. So, I went to Amazon and gazed at several grammar books, and a vocabulary book. Two weeks later, I had my books in hand, and was eager to learn.
But alas, such things are never easy. I still had quite a way to go, in order to find my current path...