Where can I go to learn Mandarin in Austin TX?

Start with your local library. Austin is a big enough city to have a library that supports what follows.

Check with your local library to see if they have the CD sets for Pimsleur, Beginning Chinese. If not, ask to do an inter-library loan There may be a basic 8 lesson set but the full beginning set is 30 lesson set, so try to get the 30 lesson set. If you have to do an inter-library loan, you might be able to keep the disks for a week. That will give you time to evaluate how you like the Pimsleur method. Pimsleur can be burned to an MP3 format and played on a computer or an mp3 player. It doesn't use a book. It is easy and you can carry it around on an ipod or a cheap mp3 player. Listen every day. If you finish the Beginning 30 lessons, get the Intermediate, then the Advanced. No book is necessary. Once you get started, use the internet to find sites that explain the basic grammar of each language. Chinese has one of the easiest grammars that I have ever studied. Check your bigger local bookstores for a book that teaches the grammar patterns. You won't have to learn the characters for quite a while because students in China learn using an alphabet called Pinyin that has all the letters that we have in the English alphabet. Maybe later on you can fool around with the characters but if you learn to speak you can communicate without characters. But to read you will have to eventually learn them so find a book that teaches beginning writing using the simplified characters of the People's Republic of China. Later you can learn the older, more complex forms.

Also ask at the library for Rosetta Stone, Mandarin. Ask if they have a digital library version that you can access from home using your computer.

Then, when you finally find a class with a teacher, you will be hopefully a bit ahead and class will be easier.