Life happened and mandarin was a casualty. So challenge 2 was a failure.

But I was reminded that I did want to learn this language properly lol I also recently joined a Chinese orchestra and feel lost lol, so learning is paramount

My personality is that I am competitive and like setting challenges for myself; so this April I'm starting a new challenge -> Get to an HSK 4 level in a month. Why a month? coz I say so...

Day 1 figuring out my materials and resources

• I have installed lute for my reading and uploaded a ton of books
• I plan to read at least 15 minutes a day
• I have loaded my anki decks and will begin with revising HSK 1 and 2 over the next few days
• I have gotten my text book and character books ready

My main resources

1. Tuttle Chinese Characters
2. Lute and Du Chinese for reading
3. Sticky Study and Anki - refold deck for hanzi and vocab SRS
4. Grammar book - New Practical Chinese Reader plus Chinese Gramma wiki
5. Coursera courses on YouTube, EdX Beginner ad Intermediate Chinese
6. YouTube and Instagram channels that I come across when doom scrolling
7. anything else that takes my fancy... 30 days is along time lol

Some things to note for this challenge

• I plan to take a mock test before starting to see what I would score, as a bench mark and to see what I still remember. I don't think it will be that bad because I still watch a ton of Chinese drama so even with subtilties I think some decay has happened but not an astronomical amount. The past year I have done very little study, anki says less than 1 hour same a using mylingua only a handful of times for around 5 minutes
• figure out how to measure the time used, so trying to create a tracker of sorts on notion or with python just so I see what I really spend time on
• I will not actively practice writing unless I totally bored and have time to mess around. 
• I will start practicing to type on PC and not just on my phone