Day 27 -- June 20

Night Market in the Morning

Last night for whatever reason I had some real difficultly sleeping. This happens to me occasionally but it’s really frustrating, especially when I know I have to get up in the morning. I finally got to sleep around 3 am. I got up and 7:45, my usual time. I wasn’t feeling to terrible, but hopefully when I go to sleep tonight I’ll be able to sleep easily. Morning routine went as smoothly as it always does. I reviewed my homework, I’m actually really pleased with how much I feel I am learning. the pace is incredibly fast but for me it’s perfect. My roommates of course managed to sleep through both my breakfast and lunch. It weird that by the time they wake up I have already had 2/3 of the food I will have that day.

No Parking Lots for Cars...

    Met up with Jillian and Nick before class and swung by Kawa for some iced coffee. After that I headed into the classroom to review for the quiz. We have now moved onto having other verbs besides existing verbs. It’s nice to be able to string simple sentences together. Class was much fast more animated and I realize that my speaking ability does not match with my ability to write, read or understand. This is perhaps the hardest part of Mandarin, but for me I find it frustrating. It will all work out. We also got to watch the video that we made with all of us doing out speaking parts. It was quite fun.

    I went back to the dorm and pulled out the books for studying, originally I was going to go for a run but today was very hot and I really didn’t feel like drowning in sweat. I grabbed dinner at the cafeteria, which was a bit of a disappointment. The food just wasn’t as tasty as I am used to, oh well you win some you lose some. The picture doesn’t look particularly appetizing either. I continued to do my homework. I actually had a really lovely Facebook chat with Johnny about Learning Mandarin. It gave me hope for my future learning.

    I ran into Claire, and found her in the midst of packing. She offered to give somethings that she no longer wanted. I now have a lovely pillow, a drying rack and a ton of hangers. Thank you, Claire!! It’s always nice when people give you things. She is going to the Philippines for a short bit then back to her home country of France. On the note of packing, I don’t think I’ve mentioned this on the blog, but I too will be moving on Sunday to the summer dorms. It’s about 10 minutes down the road in Gongguan. I have no idea how this is all going to work but you’ll hear about it on Sunday.

    After getting things from Claire I settled back down only to get a Facebook message from Johnny boy inviting me to come out and get some juice from a stand called Coco’s. I ended up with a mango slush that was very tasty. We went back to the dorms where we ran into Jillian, Nick, Daniel, Micheal and Later Sean would join us. We played a few round of Egyptian Rat screw which was absolutely delightful. When everyone is together the group has a fantastic set of chemistry. I absolutely adore them all, hopefully I’ll be able to drag them out next weekend for river hiking in Wulai. We shall see how that works out.

    Eventually I made back into my dorm. I finished off the last bit of my homework. I managed to arrange a meeting with Sean where he can help me with speaking. I just need to practice with someone who I knows what they are doing. I figure dinner and a very simple chat would not go amiss. I am looking forward to hanging out with him again. I got to talk with my roommates. We are all packing and getting ready to leave. We were laughing so hard about North Korea which sounds weird but we were talking about visiting places and North Korea came up. I said I would go if only I get to come back to the United States. My Korean roommate started absolutely busting up laughing. It’s strange how in a different language we talk about political situations that are suddenly very close. Well the inability to sleep last night is taking it’s toll. I think I am going to try to get more sleep than last time. Good night, everyone.