Learning Mandarin Week-by-Week (minus a week or two)

Okay, so I got a little sidetracked with the latest referrals and failed to learn new words this past week..or two. I think that over the next week I'm going to focus on the few words that I have learned, or at least have tried to learn. Learning has been a challenge for me because 1). I'm not really forced to use them on a daily basis 2). French was difficult enough, let alone Mandarin and 3). I guess I'm not that smart. Yes, it's true. Studies have shown that people who speak Mandarin have more brainpower. Go figure. Here are a few other language resources and this one looks really good for adoption-related phrases. I'm going to make some flashcards for myself and see if that helps.