Oh god - the four tones - I remember being utterly utterly rubbish with them. I learnt Chinese at school and being sat in the tinest classroom in the world with swotty Alexa who got everything right first time and my Chinese teacher saying the same word over and over again in different ways wasn't the highlight of my school career. On the bright side, speaking some Chinese when I actually got to China was rather handy to say the least. I think I'm just bitter that I got an F in my Chinese GCSE and Alexa got an E because she'd learnt the word for panda (which I'd scoffed at her for doing) and it came up in the listening paper like 5 times...bad times.

Anyhow, good luck with your Chinese lessons - make sure they teach you how to haggle - it's the best skill to have in China! Glad everything else is going OK too (cockroaches notwithstanding!) - sounds like you're settling in well.