1-2-3…..I’m learning my A,B,C’s

I feel like a baby struggling through it’s first few words. Atleast this is a familiar feeling after my experience in Argentina. I do have to admit the obvious – this language is much more complicated than anything I’ve encountered. The difficulty is in the pronunciation.
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In Spanish atleast I could look something up in the dictionary if I didn’t understand it. Here, the dictionary is written in pinyin (A language selected by the communists in the 1950’s to convert Chinese characters into roman letters). Pronunciation is a killer. Though, from what I’ve read, once I get that down it should not be so difficult. The grammar in Chinese is quite simple (for example, they don’t really have a past or future tense). Also, the vocabulary is very logical.
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On the bright side….I know how to count to 99!!!!! YAY ME!!. It’s not really that much of an accomplishment because it’s all based on the numbers 1-10…..
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1 – yee
2 – are
3 – san
4 – sz
5 – woo
6 – lyo
7 – chee
8 – pa
9 – jeoh
10 – shzu
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Note: The spelling above is TOTALLY inaccurate. I just remembered the sounds and that is the best way to describe it. I’m sure the real pin-yin is completely different. (See above picture for Pinyin)