Hey, I'm back at studying Mandarin! After a shockingly long time of just fiddling with Mandarin language apps (which, however, seem to have been effective in what they do, but only kept my passive skills in shape) I'm back to more active learning! Two or three times a week I chat for a full hour with a teacher from Datong, a city in Shanxi I visited a few years ago! She's not actually in Datong - but she's not here either. 她住在奥斯陆 She lives in Oslo! We talk via Skype, through a service called 
iTalki. I was delighted (and more than a little astonished) to discover that after years of avoiding speaking I can still talk about all sorts of things - admittedly with a skilled and patient teacher who knows what learners are likely to know and understand. After we finish, I've taken to summarizing our discussions in written Chinese, at which point I avail myself of another online language helper - Google translate. When my intended meaning doesn't come through, I tweak until it does. 加油！
iTalki. I was delighted (and more than a little astonished) to discover that after years of avoiding speaking I can still talk about all sorts of things - admittedly with a skilled and patient teacher who knows what learners are likely to know and understand. After we finish, I've taken to summarizing our discussions in written Chinese, at which point I avail myself of another online language helper - Google translate. When my intended meaning doesn't come through, I tweak until it does. 加油！