I started learning how to write and read Chinese about two weeks ago and know 126 characters. I bought a book on ancient Chinese architecture...all in Chinese of course. At first I decided all I wanted it for was for reference material, but after asking about a hundred questions to my Chinese friends about different pages in the book I decided I might as well learn to read Chinese. Surprisingly it is not difficult...just time consuming. My target is 50 characters a week. I'm enjoying learning the history of some of the characters....laugh for example is the bamboo radical over the gentle radical....forming laugh or 'Syau'. The explanation for this is that when you laugh you hold your belly and bend backwards...representing what the Chinese thought to be the movement of bamboo when gently blown by the wind. What's nice about living here in Taiwan and learning Chinese is that my classroom is all around me, it has been fun to see things emerge out of the blur and to finally make sense.... oh yeah that says 'entrance', etc... Literacy here I come. Next languages to learn on the list are Japanese, Russian....plus I'd like to polish up my Portuguese and try my hand at Spanish...but I'm not banking on having the time to achieve all that yet... ;)