How about starting from Pinyin and some daily expressions? I have found some files in Shared files of italki.
For Pinyin:
http://www.italki.com/files/preview.htm?guid=5d7c06b1-946a-44da-8f40-b7d88a146117

For some very basics:
http://www.italki.com/files/preview.htm?guid=6188f5ee-7419-4623-8498-97c16bc7f351

Chinese online lessons:
http://www.learningchinese.org/phpcms/Classroom/index.html

How to write Chinese stroke by stroke:
http://writeinchinese.com/all

If you search for the language resources and shared files, you will find more useful online materials. Hope you can get started with Chinese learning asap.

if you want to come to china to study, i will recommend you the new course of foreigners is just pingyin and you could learns so fast to speak but not to characters, in one year and one semester you could finish speaking like a chinese. By the way if you are in your country learning you have yo star with the pinyin