Pinyin, and characters, and tones. Oh my, I'm lost for words!

Upon learning that I was moving to Beijing, I wasted no time beginning a Mandarin language program on my Duolingo app on my phone.

Through the app, I learned to recognize a few characters, speak some words and pick up on some tones. It wasn't long before I also learned about the challenges that awaited me as I tried to dive headfirst into this murky language pool.

The characters used to create Chinese words are basically little artsy miracles to me.