Ni Hao! My name is Matt and I'm 30 years old, from the UK. My reason for learning Chinese is two-fold really. First and foremost my girlfriend is Chinese and we plan to visit her family in Shenzen in the near future. They don't speak any English at all and I would like to communicate with them as best as I can, so it is my goal to learn some basic Chinese as quickly as possible! Although my girlfriend will be helping me with this process, I wanted a way to learn and practice in my own time as well. I would also like to be able to speak Chinese for regular trips to our parent company in China, as recently our company was purchased by a Chinese firm in Beijing. I help provide IT support to both our own site and through the IT support staff at our parent company and sometimes the detail gets lost in the language gap; so filling this would be fantastic! I am looking forward to starting my course this week, which was an early Christmas present from my girlfriend :) Good luck to everyone with their own learning :) Zaijian! Matt.

Ni hao, having your girlfriend help you will be great. You have a free study partner who will probably have a lot of patience as well, that's great. Let us know how you get on. When are you going to meet her family? Have a good new year! :P

Ni Hao! Thanks for your reply. We were going out for the Chinese New Year, but this looks doubtfull now. We hope to visit soon though. Hope you have a great 2010 :) Matt.