Chinese Cartoons

I found a kid's channel on CCTV that is the equivilant of PBS, so I leave it on quite a bit to practice listening to Chinese. They speak more slowly and use simpler language, so it's great for a learner like me. I can't really bring myself to sit down and watch it for more than about 15 minutes, but they do have Thomas the Tank Engine, SpongeBob SquarePants, Teletubbies, and a really cute little penguin cartoon called Penguin Clan, all dubbed in Mandarin. I wish they had Chinese Sesame Street, now that would really be fun! 

I also study with Rosetta Stone software on my computer and study characters and grammar with a few study books. And I try to memorize characters from my dictionary. It is very frustrating at times to not be able to learn more quickly than I am. I can't help but think if I had been in France or Spain for 8 months, I'd be speaking a lot better Spanish or French than I am Chinese. But, I'm going to keep plugging away. 

Listening is the hardest part, as in having to talk to Chinese people and figure out what the heck they are saying!  Reading is the easiest, I can do it slowly. It's just a matter of memorizing the characters. So it takes A LOT of time, but it's not necessarily hard. Anyone could do it with enough time.