Here is a photo of me on the Great Wall during my initial visit to China in mid-June. I was sent by Apple to help install a massive eLearning infrastructure at the Western Academy in Beijing. I have approximately 5 days worth of familiarity with China and can speak about 4 phrases - “hello”, “thank you”, “good”, and “I don’t want that”. It’s surprising how far you can get with just those. However, my iTunes is currently ripping a 6-disk Mandarin crash course which I intend to load into my iPod. Maybe by the time we leave, I’ll know 6 phrases instead of 4. I also purchased iLingo from Talking Panda Software. This is professionally developed audio library of phrases that you access from the “notes” reader in your iPod.
We intend to hire a language tutor and practice learning the language once we arrive. It will be interesting to see if a total immersion such as this can really force one to learn…especially someone who was such a poor student.
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