Thank you all for the great feedback...it's my first day here and I've already got a couple of users offering me their precious help!
Maybe I should give out a little of my past history...I'm 23, it's my third year in Cà Foscari (Venice) studying Languages and Cultures of the Oriental Asia.
I must admit, my chinese is pretty poor, because I never got the occasion (and maybe the guts) to practice it with some native speakers...also here the lessons with native tongue teachers are few and with almost no interaction.
In the last few months I started to watch taiwanese drama series (loving them!) and listening to taiwanese music...
This is shifting my perception of how the language can change from a place to the other of the same country (even tho I was already used to the shift of pronunciation here in Aosta Valley, from village to village).
Why did I choose chinese? I LOVE languages, I'm always trying to mimick as much as accurately as I can the accents and inflections I hear...so chinese is perfect for me!
Also I'm trying to develop a system of chinese characters memorization that relies on Giordano Bruno's methods of visual manipulation...we'll see!
Best regards,
Francesco
Albert
Ciao! Welcome to Dalian. 
ha ha good luck!!!
