I've written before about Chinesepod, the Chinese language learning podcast out of Shanghai, which I'm listening to most mornings on my iPod at the gym.

From the ChinesePod blog comes this: a Chinese school in Portland, Oregon that's built around Chinesepod lessons and communities. What's interesting is that ChinesePod was designed according to a community-building model: you can download podcasts and read forums for free (extra lesson enhancers cost more), and listeners/users write in from all over the world to support each other, writing blogs about how their learning is going.

This Portland school is sort of an extended meet-up. It seems to be a natural next step for ChinesePod: the local outpost of a global community, instantiating in a specific place all the same community-building tools that ChinesePod has offered.

It's introduced here.