It's one of the hardest languages in the world to learn! This is an accepted fact, SB. You really do live in your own little world!

It's widely accepted that for western speakers Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic are the hardest languages to become fluent in.

I picked up functional Chinese when I lived there so I could eat and shop comfortably, but more than that would have required hours of serious study and I would rather spend that time developing my teaching skills and building my resources file for my classes than learning a language for a country I don't plan on settling in.