I slept most of Thursday, and returned to work yesterday feeling much better, with barely a sniffle. Then I woke up today feeling like death, and with my brain determined to escape to freedom via my nose. Maybe it's the sudden change in weather--it rained last night, then got quite cold. Whatever it is, I feel like someone's been hollowing out my ( Read more... )

Things I did today:

1) failed at speaking Mandarin
2) felt awkward and out of place

So, a bit of a failure.

Things that cheer me up:
1) Improv Everywhere
2) Funny Amazon.com reviews
3) Freaking out about Naruto 397, asdkjhadslf COME ONNNN

I signed up for Chinese classes this morning. The potential mood boost from taking action and making some kind of progress in my life here was tempered by the anxiety-inducing feeling of handing over ALL MY MONEY. Seriously; I'd managed to hold onto a fair portion of my last paycheck and was looking forward to ending this month on a less ( Read more... )

The internet guys came to my apartment on Monday. I must have subconsciously been expecting some musty, middle-aged nerd or something? Because I was a little surprised when a young, modestly cute guy knocked on my door. This only added to the embarrassment of not speaking or understanding enough Chinese to be useful and standing around like an ( Read more... )

The sentences we have to translate for this Chinese homework are the craziest things ever.For today's busy family, there is an obvious need for togetherness. "People really begin to value the experience of the entire family doing activities in the same space. Maybe that has to do with the fact that people aren't home so much anymore," says one of ( Read more... )

Several of my relatives from Taiwan are visiting and staying with my family right now, and today they all came up to see me and look at the campus and see my dwellings ( Read more... )

You know something's wrong when your break from doing a homework assignment involves...

...doing a different homework assignment.

The good news: my incredibly weird Chinese assignment turned out to be much easier to write than I'd feared. In fact, I uh, kind of went over the suggested length (I've yet to write it out by hand, but I have a clever ( Read more... )

Chinese--as a class, not a language--continues to bemuse and bewilder me. (OK, it bewilders me as a language, too, but I'm getting better.) Our first essay assignment is possibly the most cracked-out thing I've encountered in any of my Chinese classes here, and that's saying something. I, just- you guys have to read this. It's so beautiful. It goes ( Read more... )

I got up two or three times last night to put on more clothes. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble by putting the long underwear on in the first place, but I don't think I was ready to accept just how cold it was. How cold was it? I think penguins spontaneously appeared in a few locations ( Read more... )

My Chinese textbook is truly a work of art. This might just be the best example sentence ever constructed:

"He drives into the sea the car of whomever says he is incorrect."

I bet you've always wanted to know how to say that in a foreign language.