Glimmers of understanding

Hey groovy, someone just sent me an email in Mandarin that didn't take me more than a day to understand.

不知道你是否还记得我。我是你以前在UCL语言中心的汉语老师， X XX。你现在还在UCL学习汉语吗？还是你转道SOAS学习去了？。

我刚刚在flickr找找关于UCL的照片，没想到看见好多你拍的照片，句话我们以前去中国成吃饭的照片，还有很多我的照片！你的照片都拍的很好。

你还在UCL工作吗？你有个好消息, 我要回来ucl工作了！！我8月初开始工作。希望能在跟你见面。我想你现在中文一定很棒！

I only had to look up about 5 words, but I got the gist straight away. I just spent half an hour re-typing it (this means I have to know what the pinyin is for each character) and I'm well on my way to composing a reply (我当然记得你, 我汉语水平还可以 。。。） turn-around time a fortnight. I'm starting to feel borderline literate.