The Past
You can call me 阿波, Ezy Ryder, or Matthias, whichever you find the easiest to pronounce. I'm a 20 years old Aspie, and I should begin studying "English philology with a specialisation in translation/interpreting+Chinese" at the university, this October. I learnt English to a satisfying level, but I don't remember how. Which makes learning my second foreign language, not so different from learning one's first one. At first I tried learning Japanese; I learnt the Kana, a total of about 2,500 Kanji and 9,000 words. Wasn't enough. On top of that, Japan seems to be comparatively expensive. So I shifted my focus to Mandarin (Traditional characters, due to their beauty, similarity to Kanji, and above all, my interest in Taiwan). I learnt to write 3,000 characters by hand (I know it won't make me "remember them better" or anything, but as opposed to any other writing system, I actually really enjoy handwriting in Chinese), and about 13,000 words. Wasn't enough. I'm an Anki addict, and all the reviews going from words written in Chinese (I don't like reviewing sentences), to the pronunciation and meaning, left me with listening comprehension lagging far, far behind my reading comprehension. In fact, nearly non-existent. To counteract that, I tried relearning some words going from pronunciation to Hanzi and meaning. But spending three hours a day, trying to relearn 500 words a day on average, got me burnt out after some 4,000 words. Had it improved my listening comprehension? Maybe a bit. Not quite sure. I ended up with a huge character-writing backlog, that's for sure.
The Present
At the moment I'm in the beautiful city of Taichung, Taiwan. It was my first time travelling by plane, as well as travelling abroad. At first, nobody seemed to understand much of what I was trying to say, but I think I've been getting a bit better. I'm able to ask people for directions or price, order a meal; and recently I managed to get a writing brush, an inkstone and some ink, at a 書法 (Chinese Calligraphy) supplies store, where the only employee at the venue didn't speak much English. I even managed to crack a little "joke" by the cash register. Thankfully everybody I've met so far has been very nice, patient and polite. 波蘭人沒有台灣人友好;)
I bought a few books in a local bookstore (two works of fiction, two on philosophy and one on writing 草書,行書 and 隸書 (of all things) with a fountain pen), I also try to note new words in a notebook, which I also use as a sort of diary (in Mandarin, of course). I think I'll be trying to learn Mandarin with a bit more laid-back attitude for now. I'll get back to heavy Anki'ing once I get back