I would also suggest chinese web-radio, dvd's (if you can find the right dialect), TV shows, children's stories on tape... Keep things playing in the back ground to train your ear.
Also, if you can find a family with small children, try some babysitting, or have someone teach you nursery rhymes and short jokes.
Keep a focus on full sentences - knowing the meaning of the sentence rather than each word. It jumpstarts the process, and understanding of individual words will crystalize after a while.
Try chinese karaoke, too - there are LOADS of chinese karaoke bars and it is a very popular activity. Shouldn't be too difficult to find someone to help you get started!
Some people like to go to chinese restaurants and talk to the waiters etc. Lots of chinese restaurants don't actually serve chinese food - more like westernised chinese food, but if you search the net, you could find some good adresses for a genuin experience...
In other words, anything that helps inspire you to keep learning, and gives you cultural pegs to hang your new words on, and to activate things that you have read in the dictionary or in self-teach books.
Depending on how serious you are, find a course at a local community college. My sister was the only person on our island learning chinese, so she took classes at the community college... by video uplink!!!!
Good luck, and most of all, ENJOY YOURSELF.
Oh, and: Don't let anyone fool you into thinking it is easy. It always takes work and effort and interest. Some things just make the effort and work seem a bit less frustrating, and a few things will speed things along. So far there aren't many magical language learning pills. Only Lozanov seems to have made "a language in a month" possible, and I have yet to find a course that uses his material. Of course, I am in the middle of nowhere, and you might be located a bit more centrally!
Kosmik
