Just got quizzed by a robot. Three riddles on the Chinese characters he was thinking about. I think I got the satisfaction of guessing correctly that a 7 year old in China would have gotten. Still feels good.

Still working at Into the Haze. Just about to enter a dark abandoned subway station. Wish me luck.

Concentrating only on Into the Haze. Definitely improving my reading skill. Can guess meanings and most pinyin, but without tones, of almost words I didn't know when I started 10 days ago.

More Into the Haze. Also started a little bit of the comics.

Wordswing Into the Haze. Was able to get to a 2nd checkpoint. Also reading the Escape game, but the text is more obscure than Into the Haze. The character translations don't add up on the sentence level, so I'm not very sure what is going on. I'll continue for one more day, but if it doesn't get better, I'm bailing.

Wordswing Into the Haze and Du Chinese dialogue on a restaurant misunderstanding.

Continued to die (twice) on Wordswing Into the Haze. I started playing the audio for each step and now am beginning to associate the sounds with the character meanings. I can see how this can get you away from the translation mode of working in a foreign language. Also, started another Wordswing game, Escape.

Into the Haze and Escape.

Finally got around to reading the help guide to Wordswing and will start rating words I know and developing word lists. Continuing the Into the Haze game. Did several free Du Chinese lessons.

Died getting entangled in aggressive plants in Into the Haze. Learning new vocabulary dealing with enemies, gloom and doom. Started looking at texts from Chairman Bao and Du Chinese. I think I'll focus more on Du Chinese with texts that are more personal and I think easier. I thought even their advanced texts were rather accessible.

Restarted Into the haze from last checkpoint. I'm getting the idea of accumulating extra tools and gaining points by taking risks. Surviving better. Still did DeFrancis, but will check out Chairman Bao materials on LizH recommendation.

I fell into a black hole in the Into the Haze game. I'm willing to give it another try. I think the mapping helps me keep track of where I've been. I finished the review chapter of DeFrancis and will keep with it for the next round of chapters to pick up more traditional characters.

Second attempt at Into the Haze. Took the sewer route instead of the broken down highway this time. I'm thinking of drawing a map to keep track of where I am. I'm still doing the DeFrancis reading and picking up a few traditional characters, but it certainly has less appeal. Might check out other resources to take its place.

Ran out of oxygen for my first Into the Haze game on Wordswing. Maybe on my second round I'll do better since I have a better idea of what happens during the game. It took me about an hour to do this, 30 minutes on Monday and another 30 minutes Tuesday. Still slogging through the DeFrancis texts - finished through Review Chapter 6. Lots of repetition and definitely not as much fun as the Wordswing game.

Up to Lesson 5 in DeFrancis, and got to the 10th choice in Into the Haze. Have to subscribe now. New (to me) characters are repeated often enough that I'm beginning to recognize them.

Looking for things to read for the beginning level. Started with reading the Character Text for Beginner Chinese by DeFrancis. Interesting because I'm learning simplified characters, but the text uses traditional characters. The texts are so easy that I can figure out what most of the characters mean. I might continue with this, and hopefully, the texts become more interesting as the lessons progress. Also checked out the Wordswing game text, Into the Haze. Now this is very interesting, because I know enough characters from studying Heisig's Remembering Simplified Hanzi, that I can pretty much guess the overall meaning of the text sentences, but there are still many characters and expressions (maybe 15%) that are new. This might be the sweet spot for me for a text that is interesting content wise and still simple enough that I can access it.