Pat Yourself On the Back

I'm back, after a long separation. Hope you didn't miss me too much.

I woke up at 5:36 this morning. That seems to be the time that I can drag myself out of bed most mornings. I turn my alarm off, but leave the snooze on so that I can still slowly wake up without falling back asleep, which never ends well. I have gotten quite good at functioning on 7 hours or less now a days, and find that as long as I have someone to keep me awake, my classes aren't too bad either.

It is starting to get really cold in the mornings. As in 35 degrees if I am lucky. I have to wear my ski jacket to school if I don't want to freeze. Some mornings I even wear my hat and gloves, which always earns me a laugh from my fellow SYAer's. This morning wasn't too bad, only 35, but I still wore my jacket. I can't stand being cold. Although this winter, I am determined that I am going to beat the cold. I will not be as cold anymore. I realize that this is really not something that I can control, but I am going to bloody try.

I got to school at 6:30, which is also about normal for me. I am just about always the first one there, unless Chris beats me, which he does on some mornings. But I always get homework done until a lot of people start showing up. That is about the point when I become so distracted that I just can't focus. I almost brought my computer to school so I could call my parents on Thanksgiving, but I decided that I didn't want to lug the thing all the way to school. Sorry guys, Thanksgiving is just not that exciting. Especially not if you are going to describe to me, in detail, what you are eating, and therefore, what I can't have. It's just not right.

This morning, in our first Chinese class, we had a test on the first 4 chapters, so about 150 characters at least. I have no idea, really. I thought it went well, but when I tried to turn it in, she handed it back, saying "Find the mistakes." I didn't, really. It was kind of depressing, because then she showed me what I had done wrong, and I felt like a total failure. It was all stupid mistakes, really. Of course. Ah well. I ate some of my zao gao cake that my family bought (to cheer myself up) and then went to the next class, which I have a test in on Monday. My teachers are currently collaborating against us. It is not cool.

After Chinese, it was back down six flights of stairs to buy a jian bing. I swear, that stuff is more addictive than crack. I have one every morning, just about. But they are only 44 cents each, so I don't feel too bad about it. At least, not enough to stop eating them. Everyone at SYA loves them, so we normally just find one person who is going to buy them, and have them buy a crapload. I didn't want to wait though, and just went by myself. We aren't supposed to eat inside the buildings, but I normally finish by the time I get to the top of the stairs.

First up was Calculus today, which went much better than normal. I'm starting to understand what we are doing, which is perfect timing, really, because we have a test next Wednesday, as per usual. I did much better on my last test, which was a big confidence boost. Hopefully I can keep it up. Right after Calculus was History, which was more of the same. We had a good conversation for the first half of class, and then got totally off topic. It doesn't help that we have a kid in our class who most certainly does not want to be there, but our teacher charges on anyway.

For lunch, Chris and I went downstairs for some chicken, because neither one of us were particularly hungry, and I had homework to do, so I was going to go back upstairs to finish it. Yet again, I was distracted, because there were people in all the rooms, and it was Friday afternoon on a lovely day. You just try focusing on Calculus homework. It's not possible. After wandering aimlessly up and down the halls for a while, it was off to English for me.

We had a guest speaker come in to talk to us about the book we are reading, Dream of the Red Chamber. (As a side not, the book is actually titled 红楼梦, which literally means Red Building Dream. Gotta love translations.) It was a pretty interesting talk, because she has been studying the book for a long time, but we did run into a bit of a language barrier. Her English was excellent, but still, there is only so good that it can get. I wonder if that is what I will sound like to Chinese people one day. That is kind of a depressing thought.

Right after that class, I had a free. Because I was planning on going out to dinner with a lot of people Saturday night, I didn't want to go out tonight, because two nights in a row might be a bit much. Because of that, I didn't really want to go anywhere, because there wasn't all that much time. So I sat in the study room with Chris (various other people cycled through) and did Chinese and Calculus. This continued until about 4:30, at which point Jang, a Korean guy at SYA, came in and invited us to come to his Thanksgiving dinner with his sister, who is leaving to go home soon.