Filling Holes

I've lived in China for four years, and I had a basic survival level in Mandarin. That is, I could speak certain phrases to buy some of the foods in restaurants I wanted and some I just bought because I knew the word for it. I could count money and tell a taxi driver which way to go by grunting at him. The problem was, as soon as someone spoke to me, I wouldn't be able to understand what they said. It was like there were endless possibilities of subjects they could be talking about or something. Anyway, I only understood certain words. There were serious holes in my ability to communicate with the world around me. That's Mandarin filled those holes. No doubt, I can actually hold a conversation with people now. Of course, I'm not fluent, yet, but I'm far better than I was just 80 lessons ago.