Top of the World

I suffer from mood swings. Really bad ones. One day, I will be totally fine, living my life with absolutely no problems. The next day, when I wake up, I am in a huge funk, that no one can drag me out of. The only solution is for me to go to bed again, and try again tomorrow. Unfortunately, this huge mood swing means that I start taking it out on my friends and family. I'm sorry, all of you guys. I really don't mean to. But I appreciate all that you put up with. Especially you Mom. You put up with an amazing amount of my neurosis.

This was my world for the past two days. This is also the reason why I didn't write a blog yesterday: I don't want to remember how I felt yesterday. Mood swings are just that bad for me. But I am better now.

I wasn't awake by any stretch of the imagination this morning. I was on autopilot when I was getting ready, and I spent way too much effort trying to keep my eyes open. But I could still pay attention to what was happening in class, and contribute to the conversation. Actually raising my hand and voluntarily making a statement is not something that I am used to doing here, but I did it today. I gave myself a mental pat on the back. That was the beginning of my day, and it only got better. My "on top of the world" feeling only grew and grew through the rest of the day. But this first lecture was a very good start to my day. I felt confident, and happy.

When we got to the smaller practice class, there was a new challenge: we had to teach the class. Each of us had been divided according to a certain paper that we had to read, and each of us had to teach a paragraph or two to the class, for 10 minutes. I don't know about you, but I really don't like being the teacher. All of the teachers were excited, because they got to be the "students" for a while, but I know that I speak for most of us actual students when i say that we were not nearly as excited as they were. Not to mention the fact that while we were teaching, we taught a lot of the words and grammar wrong. When I was teaching, I was not at all calm; in fact, I was super nervous. I had to fake (for 10 minutes) that I knew exactly what I was talking about, and I knew how to teach other people. It actually was a lot of fun. Well, it was a good experience at least. And my class was pretty awesome, all the people know how to have a good time. I can understand why the teacher wanted us to do this. I paid SO much more attention to our homework (because I had to prepare words) than I normally do. And it was a nice change of pace.

My normal place to eat lunch has been closed for a week, which is throwing a huge crank in my schedule. I went to a Zhou restaurant for lunch yesterday (zhou is a rice soup thing that you put things in to add flavor: I got a cold mango one. It tasted like mango mochi, and was completely amazing.) Today, I was not nearly as creative. I just walked around the corner of the school and bought some baozi for lunch. Yummy. Not good if you eat them every day, but good for a little oily carbo treat every once in a while. Guess what the rest of my lunch break consisted of? If you guessed going back to my room and having a cup of tea while trying to rest, then you would be right. I know. I am predictable. I like to think that it is one of my better qualities. Sometimes.

Today my one on one class was super helpful. I had one of my favorite teachers as my person today, and all that we did was go over grammar for tomorrows test, and talk about Beijing. But going over the grammar was a major help. I felt like I had already done most of my studying by the time that we were done, and I understood all of it. What more could you want? I felt like nothing could bring me down. It's so weird how I go from one extreme to the other. Maybe it's just because I am a girl. Who knows. But I am quite enjoying this feeling of confidence. Hopefully, it will last.

The head of our program invited a nationally renowned Chinese tone teacher to come talk to us today. Basically, every book in China that talks about teaching tones to foreigners was written by this woman. She is amazing. She came to talk to us for an hour. (I was actually required to go, because my tones are just that bad. I'm so glad I was though.) She was an amazing teacher. I wish that I had the time and opportunity to talk with her one on one. I feel like I would be speaking like a Chinese person after a week. She broke down the tones and the characters, and showed us exactly how to pronounce words, how to say them, and when to pause in a sentence. And she made it interesting! I didn't mind sitting in the same spot for an hour, saying the same words over and over again, trying to fix problems that most people can't even distinguish. I totally ate it up. However, even though hearing her talk, and describe the Chinese tones was a huge help, it also made me realize just how far I still have to go, and how bad my tones really are. I can fool myself every day by speaking really fast, but when I get down to it, I still have a ways to go. But I certainly don't care. I love learning Chinese. This is the kind of thing that I paid for. This is what I want to do.

And of course, when learning how to speak Chinese, you always need some practical applications. And I can say that that is one of my reasons for seeing Jack. Tonight was another session. Thankfully, he didn't immediately push my arms to muscle failure. I don't think I ever hit that point tonight. But it was hard. It was a lot of long reps with not as much weight, so it just weighed down on me. And unfortunately, I hadn't eaten since noon, and it was now 6 o'clock. Which, when you are lifting weights, is not a good idea. I held on for a little while, and felt really good, and then I started to feel really bad. My head floated up to the clouds, and started spinning out of control. When you are holding 20 pounds above your head, and trying to do lunges, it is normally preferable to have your head firmly on the ground, thank you very much. So I had to keep stopping, not because I was tired, but because if I didn't, I was going to fall over. I told Jack that I was fine, but I thin that he knew I was not doing so well. He went easy on me for the last 15 minutes. Hopefully my next session will go better with him. I still got a good work out today, but I wasn't feeling so hot.

I got dinner with some friends who I randomly bumped into at the gym, and then came back to my room to study for my test tomorrow. And that is what I have been dong up until now, when I heard the call to write a blog. I am not too worried for my test tomorrow. It should be easy. The grammar is not as hard as it has been in the past, and for once in my life, I have actually memorized the characters. Knock on wood. Wish me luck!