Anyone learning Chinese?

Recently I've decided to learn Chinese. It would be nice to at least be able to say common phrases, mostly I want to be able to speak a little bit with the Chinese tourists that come to our town.

Do you have any tips how I should start? I've never studied a language with a different script so I'm lost!

Here is a post I wrote a few years ago; I hope it helps. 

I tried to learn some Chinese's and Japanese when I was about 11 I had a penpall (pre internet being so widely available ) I didn't learn characters just phonetic words. maybe start that way rather than overwhelming yourself from the get go with a whole different set of characters.