By the way, if you need study material,i'd love to help you find some prevalent in Chinese recently.and email to you.

Hi, Douglas.i am very happy to meet you,if you want to learn Chinese,I suggest you directly to learn vocabulary instead of learn the Pinyin that is complex for you, moreover before the 1930 year ago, Chinese people is haven't Pinyin also. you can attempt to learn a short word, or read simple sentence just like Chinese' ancestor.

this is how to start to learn Chinese,but as to how to write in Chinese,there is a general order :to write a chinese character from left to right,from top to bottom.)))I think this may confuse you up. In china,there are kinds of writing books to teach schoolchildren how to write chinese character in the correct order.when you come to china,you can buy some to practise writing.Come on!!

You'd better firstly learn Pinyin (the Chinese phonetic alphabet) and some basic grammar. : )