Nov. 16, 2014
Today involved homework, study, and meeting with friends. I got my homework done in the morning, Chinese during coffee is always a good thing. Jesse and I have purchased a new kind of coffee from Ikea, it’s better than what we had from Starbucks, a significantly less. I miss my Bibo’s and Trader Joe’s coffee. After homework I met up with Meiling, she and I chatted and I gave her, her souvenir from Xian. Then it was out to the market with Jesse and Corey. Jesse’s watch had an unfortunate incident in which someone accidentally through it away. So Jesse went to an open market and bought a knock off Omega watch. It’s fun wandering around the market, but they always jack up the prices for us foreigners. It’s fun to hear Jesse and Corey attempt to barter. Corey has trouble bartering because he always converts into USD, but both Jesse and I are like “But the Chinese people only pay 100 kuai (another word for money)!” It’s an on going struggle. The rest of the day was a quiet affair, just studying and hanging out. I can’t believe that classes are more than a 2/3rd’s over. This time next month I will be out of classes, and starting into my winter break. So much Chinese and so little time.
Nov. 17, 2014
Today was filled with mild excitement. Classes were normal, Chinese class is getting easier and easier which I feel could be a good or bad thing, for now let’s operate under the assumption that’s it’s a good thing. I managed to get through the homework fast enough, but then I discovered that my power cord had finally kicked up it’s heels and died. I found this out as I had plugged in my computer to recharge the almost dead battery. With serious gerry-rigging, I was able to keep my computer alive long enough to transfer my blog, China pictures, and music into storage devices. It was a stressful hour or so. Poor Jesse got yelled at more than once out of panic for information about what was happening. Thankfully he and I had already set something up in which I am buying his second computer from him. Our plan was just moved forward by a week or so. So it all worked out, mom is meant to transfer the money so it shall all be kosher soon. I went to visit Chiyi and got some help with my presentation for tomorrow’s class. After all the worry it was smooth sailing. Raphi, Corey, Jesse, and I went to dinner and we consumed way too much Gengpaoji. Overall, a good day.
Nov. 18, 2014
Today was more lively. In class usually our breaks are increments of ten. Usually we have two ten minute breaks or one long 20 minute break. But today Laoshi gave us a 15 minute break, which we all mucked up. Everyone was late by five minutes. Laoshi said that unless we sang her a song she wouldn’t let us have another break. We decided on I’m a little tea pot and went for it. Her reaction was the best, “You all sound nice (said in Chinese), ok, forgiven.” She made this hand motion along with forgiven that just made us all laugh, probably harder than was necessary. At the end of class Laoshi said that we could go back to writing sentences, instead of the paragraphs we’ve started doing for the new words. Her reason was that our paragraphs weren’t good and that maybe it was too hard for us. Now what she meant to say is that we didn’t have enough understanding of Chinese written language to properly connect the sentences in a coherent paragraph. We all knew that but we pretended to be hurt. She kept trying to correct herself, but she was only making it worse. Yin Laoshi finally caught on and she announced “If you are hurt I claim cultural differences, now go away!” Everyone laughed and said our goodbyes. It was quite fun.
Lunch ended up being with three Korean people, Nina, Crystal and Nick. We all ate lunch and chatted the whole time. It was actually quite fun. Nick lived in Florida for two years so his English was pretty good. I really like making international friends. After lunch I went to meet up with Meiling, she and I were having one final meeting before the dubbing contest. We would be doing a scene from Coraline. A bunch of Chinese student learning english were hosting the contest. It was actually quite fun. There were a bunch of other USAC students assisting their friends as well. I had to leave pretty quickly after that as I had work.
Work was interesting, I think I will begin some tutoring hours which is good because that means more money in my pocket. Also tutoring is something I am far more familiar with, so I think I will be able to do it well. Class was going about how it usually does when the lights suddenly cut out. At first I thought it was just the classroom but it turned out to be the whole area. Even the apartment lights were out, which naturally lead to mass chaos as the kids began to run around in the dark. We were able to get everyone shipped off to their parents and groups of teachers (myself included) walked students out with flashlights. Thanks Grandma, the flashlight came in handy! Then I headed home and essentially crawled into bed, where I am right now. Time for sleep, tomorrow I traverse to the global center.
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