Anyone in the North West?

I am about 250 miles North and West of Cheshire, and I am not even that North or West really. What a fun little island we live on. Even in terms of just England, it looks kind of in the Middle West.

Anyways, the very best with your studies, I feel much the same. I have a problem where I seem to have no free time which I don't spend doing as little as possible.

Cheers,

I'm desperate to make a good impression, and not appear any more of an idiot than I already will! Theoretically, I've been learning for 3 years, but I haven't really at all. I did a little bit of intensive study, but then slacked off. I think our relationship got very much more serious quite quickly, and I realised suddenly this year I would have to be making the effort I should have been for years!

I would love to be a fluent second language speaker, it's kind of a dream. So why not the world's most spoken language? :)

Definitely no on the cantonese though :-p At least for the time being. I can say "yes" and that's about it. My brain's barely big enough for one language, never mind 3!

Hey Helena476,

Welcome to ChinesePod!Great to hear you are taking up a new skill - and it's Chinese! If you have any questions, make sure to post them on the community board and we'll all help out! Good luck :)

Hiya Helena476, I'm from Manchester originally and I am up there occasionally at weekends, though I am now based near Leicester.  Always good to hear from people relatively nearby (well, compared to China!) :)

Hello! Sorry for my delayed reply, I've only just noticed your post!

Thanks for your post. I have to say I was surprised to find that there are not so many UK users of this site, or at least not so many that are members of this group.

Have you been a CPod user for long? How do you find the site?

I'm kind of north-west! Ish. In a midlands kind of way. Ok, I'm not in the North West, I'm in Birmingham. And I was born in London. But my family all live in the Lake District, so hey! 

To answer your questions (that weren't addressed to me at all), I joined in 2007, but started paying a month ago :p This is both because I'm cheap, and because I've decided this is the year I finally learn Chinese. Plus I'm going to China in the Autumn to meet my girlfriend's parents and I'm terrified.

And I'm loving the site. There are niggles and kinks here and there, but the staff are super-responsive and at least seem to be making an effort to address them! I listen to 2-3 podcasts a day in the car on the way home from work. It seems to be working, combined with a lot of extra study from various other places. :)

Ha ha - thanks for pointing out my not-so-deliberate mistake! I went to Uni in Glasgow so I should have known better.

I meant the North-West of England.

Ah, I'm very jealous. I'd live to live abroad for a year or so, but have never had the chance. 

They live in Guangzhou, Guangdong province (Canton), so we'll be going there. But apparently we have to go to Nanjing too to meet her mum's parents. Round trip :-p 

How did you find your year in Jiangsu? Pretty daunting to go a country where you don't speak any of the language! 

I mean "like to live abroad". Stupid fingers! 

Great to see you helena476, good luck with your studies. I am from the "mid" North I suppose, I come from Leeds but have lived in Germany for a long time. I love Chinesepod, I wish I had more time to use more of the resources, it's a fun site, I mainly benefit from listening the podcasts on my way to work**. Most poddies seem to be serious in their studies even though we tend to procrastinate by being more in the "conversations" than actually studying. But that's fine, I suppose.

**ousijia: seeing as you're there, I do have one wish of the podcast producers. Sometimes the podcasts are either authentically in a cellar!!! or big room (yoga lesson) or there's music playing in the background or something. I personally could do without this authenticity because on my mp3 it is very hard to listen to when the traffic around me is blaring out. If you could pass this on, I'd be grateful.

xiao liang - I was teaching English in a city called Wuxi, not far from Shanghai. In fact not far from Nanjing either. Because it is such a big city, there was a big expat scene, so it wasn't too difficult to live there as a foreigner. Of course I had my armoury of survival Chinese to get me by.

I must say kudos to you for taking the time to learn the language before you meet your gf's family! Will you be learning some Cantonese too?

Sue - thanks for saying Hello! Yes, I agree that sometimes it can be easy to distract yourself with the forums, although I'm actually really enjoying the lessons. I look forward to my lunchbreak at work so I can get going!

:-)

It's great you answered my questions! In fact I am happy that anyone will respond, I'm not fussy.

I'm a bit like you in that I've only recently made a concerted effort to learn Chinese. I lived in Jiangsu province for a year in 2005/2006, and made a small effort to learn, but I definitely didn't make the most of my time there language-wise.

I agree with you, the site isn't always user friendly, but the resources are really good. There's just so much on here.

Whereabouts in China will you be going?