China

I am planing a trip to China in the next while, probably in spring on the northern hemisphere since I am hoping to take the train to Tibet and I prefer not to be in the cold. Though I should say that I would put up with the cold to see Tibet. My friend Andy works in China on rotation so it seems like the perfect opportunity to go and he is keen to take the train to Tibet (this site makes me think that it is feasible). I think it might be nice to travel with somebody for once, I am so used to traveling on my own. Andy has a flat in Chengdu and he is OK with me using it as a home base while I am in China.

map from this site

I am really exited about it and today I bought myself a Mandarin language CD (I should be honest they call it "Chinese".... a bit scary really, I hope it is Mandarin and not Cantonese. Added later: I just went to their website and they have the Cantonese course too so presumably what they call Chinese is Mandarin). I've just tried it and t seems pretty fun. It puts Mandarin ("Chinese"?) on a musical background both to relax the brain and to access the memory. You know how even if you cannot remember names of phone numbers you can remember lyrics of a song, they apply this idea. And they have a lot of repetition to make it a bit like a song. I may just be able to learn a few sentences!
The CD I bought is done by Earworms - musical brain trainer, which appears to be a branch of Berlitz. I might have been better to get a more formal language course like Rosetta Stone but I can't really afford it and even if I could it would be hard to get in South Africa where even Amazon does not send parcels.


ADDED LATER: China was great and the little bit of Mandarin I learnt made an incredible difference in my experience. I certainly hope I get to go back to China in the coming year.
You can go and see some of the photos in more recent posts like THIS one or THIS one, but you can just click on the "China" label on the right and see my photos of the Great Wall, the Terra Cotta Warriors etc.