Learning Chinese

I am a visual learner which means that I learn ideas, data and concepts through images. While the Chinese use characters, they also use pin yin which is using the greek alphabet to represent Chinese sounds.
For example the following alphabet letters on the right make the following sounds:
e-uh
i-ee
ai-I
ei-A
ao-ou
ou-o
an-ohn
en-un
ang-ahn
eng-ung
ong-on
ia-ya  
ie-yeah
iao-yeou
iou-you
ian-yen
in-een
iang-eean
ing-eeng
iong-eon
ua-waah
uo-ouu
uei-way
uan-youan
uen- uhn
uang-youan
ueng-youun
ue- wou
uan-youan
un-uhn
j-gee
q-ce
x-she
zh-zer
ch-cher
sh-sher

Then you add four different tones to these sounds and it gets really crazy. First tone is a neutral tone represented by a straight line - second tone goes up represented by / third tone goes down then up V and fourth tone goes down \.

I have had a few missteps with my language skills. To say bag is diazi and to say child is haizi. I wanted to ask someone for a bag: gei wo ye ge diazi and instead I said gei wo ye ge haizi, meaning give me a child. Needless to say the person looked confused.

Another time my daughter was teaching me to say hi my name is the word for name is jaizo said with a second tone and the word for foot is jaizo said with the third tone. So I said hi my foot is Ashley. It was pretty silly but it's teaching my kids to laugh at ourselves and our silly mistakes.