Language Learning Reboot: Giving italki a try!

Well, it has begun.  I have one month to get my Mandarin in shape for when our exchange student from Wuhan, China gets here.  I have been going back and forth as to whether or not I wanted to use italki to take private lessons, but tonight I decided to give it another shot.  My first time using italki with a professional teacher was about a year ago and it didn't go as well as I had hoped.  However, this time was actually great!

This is my teacher, Xin.  As you can tell in the picture she is very nice and very patient.  We went over quite a few things and, admittedly, my Mandarin was absolutely terrible.  At least, my conversational abilities were terrible.  My tones and pronunciation were good so I guess that's a start.  So I guess this is a new Day One in my language journey.  Here's hoping that these lessons, in addition to using Memrise and ChineseSkill, will give me that bump I need to get over this wall that I've been stuck at for while now.

For more information about italki, go here.