Building up Learning Ressources

There are so many ressources out there for learning Chinese. These are the ones I have come across so far that are worth while (IMHO)
The BBC Real Chinese Site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/chinese/real_chinese/ which is a simple introductory course
Dr Tim Xie's site on teaching Chinese. He specializes in teaching Chinese to English speaking adults using E-learning. Sounds a good combination. He has many good links. http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/
For a neat little flash card program for learning Chinese pictograms and pronounciation see http://www.declan-software.com/chinese/index.htm. There is a free 15 day limited functionality trial which will let you find out whether the flash card method is right for you.

Our Deepest fear

I was handed a French version of this attribued to Nelson Mandela, so I looked for the original version and found it. Apparently it is from Mairanne Williamson. I thought it was worth noting.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

How it all started

I have toyed with the idea of starting a blog for some time, and I have toyed with the idea of learning Chinese for some time too. Yesterday afternoon the two ideas seemed to come together.
The catalyst was a chance meeting with a young Chinese woman on Skype (you have heard about Skype haven't you? If you haven't you might find it interesting see www.skype.com. "Free P2P telephony that works" and it does.)
She was in "SkypeMe" mode so I sent her a "Are you really there" message. After a couple of minutes I was ready to give up and sent a second "too bad" message when she replied with an astonished smiley. From there the conversation grew, initially I thought that it was not going far, her initial sentences were full of mistakes and I was beginning to assume that she did not have the level of English for us to have an interesting conversation. For some reason I insisted, and asked if we could talk, she agreed and the conversation took off. She actually speaks much better English than she writes, which I found initially surprising, but as the relation between the written word and the spoken word is so different from western languages, perhaps this is to be expected.
She only has a analogue modem connection and we were cut off several times, but the quality of the audio connection was really very good (thank you Skype!).
She lives in Shanghai, she works in a clothing factory, she is 29, single, she has a very pleasant voice, a bubbly laugh, and is really eager to learn English. I will call her WiSH in this blog because it is a slightly derived version of her Chinese name. She says she tries to learn by playing English DVDs but that she cannot follow them at all. I am her first overseas contact, and she feels lucky and slightly awe struck to be talking with someone from so far away. I have now idea what she looks like, she has a photo on Skype but I would be guessing to know that she was Chinese looking at that tiny little thumbnail.
I used to be teacher and I have always enjoyed developping new skills in willing learners. I encouraged her as she has low confidence in her ability to communicate in English. She seems to have an electronic dictionary somewhere as occasionally I heard her beeping away looking to find words that she did not understand. She discovered the words consultant, negotiation, friend and yet. "Yet" was the hardest to explain.
All in all this chance meeting has been the revival point of an old desire to learn Chinese, and this blog will be the record of my progress in discovering a country with a fascinating history and culture. It will also be the guardian of my motivation, I have no idea if Wish will want to continue our conversations, if she doesn't I will try and find someother contact to be able to share a vision, a culture and a language.