Ni hao, So I have been trying to learn chinese for about a month now, I have always had this weird passion for everything chinese. The language the culture the country the women. I run into a small problem though, where i live here in the southern united states particularly in my state there seems to be a noticable lack of asians in general. The problem with learning a new language is that you have to be able to practice it, a person who already speaks it helps a great deal. The only place i can go is to one of the very few chinese restaurants near me and the one time i told them i was learning chinese and maybe they could help me with my pronouncing they looked at me as if i were nuts! This all feels so strange to me since i am from southern california where there is a huge asian population, from chinese to vietnamese and everything in between. I have looked for groups in my area and even online including here at SG and found nothing of benefit. The one group here about learning new languages on the SG website includes french russian and a few others but no chinese =(. I am distraught, i would like to learn this language and have learned 11 phrases so far but am uncertain if i am pronouncing them correctly. when i learned spanish and french i did not have this problem and i didnt even want to learn those languages! So if anyone knows of any groups or blogs or anything please let me know. xie xie