Learning Mandarin in China

I have always been  curious about the Mandarin language but never really put much thought towards pursuing it but after visiting China and learning some of the basics of the language I am now ready to really take a jab at it and possible become fluent. In my group the majority of the people had taken a Chinese class in school which I had never done. The most I knew was NiHoa (hello) and XieXie (thank you). After a couple of days struggling I finally got the hang of some new phrases and words I even got recognized by my teacher as most improved. I have a Chinese name now Xiao Shan which means Little Mountain and I know how to write it with characters which has helped me to recognize them when I see them. For example on a billboard if I saw the character 小 (Xiao) I know it had something to do with little or small and same for 山 (Shan) I knew it meant mountain. I know it’s only two characters and not enough to even hold a conversation but if I keep on apply myself and studying the language I could be fluent in no time.