Having made it to level 13
Having made it to level 13, I just want to say that there isnt a day that I start doing the course and not end up spending more than one hour doing this. Can someone really spend 15 minutes doing the Mandarin Blueprint Course? I would like to say a lot but really I would be repeating a lot of what Luke has said about trying to learn Mandarin: trying to learn but not bothering with learning the characters; trying to speak but the words never come out. I never really though that I could learn the characters and now I know enough to be able to read some of the sentences in level 13. The Hanzi method does take getting used to but thankfully I did not stop and gave it a chance. The set up does feel a little intimidating in the beginning: the main Blueprint course, the Traverse set up and use, and the Community but such was my desire to get back on the Mandarin "train" that I did not let those initial frustrating blocks deter me. The experience has been a very good one and I am hoping to be able to continue to work and improve every day.