Thursday, November 16, 2006
an exercise in english
man, i swear i wrote something in this blog since july, but... i guess not. i think i may have written something in a cafe somewhere and then forgotten to post it. sad. sad.
so then, in the spirit of this blog, let's sum up: I arrived here in Xiamen and set myself up at Xiamen University, finding lodgings in the dorms here (23 usd a month) and living with two other cool guys (akinobu from japan and daniel from indonesia) as well as right next to a quasi-old friend from the states. I'm still studying chinese, taking the fourth year classes at the OEC foreign students department here at XU. I think I've said enough before about the language being difficult, so I won't go into that, except to say that it is still difficult.
I've been spending a lot of time in the library, surrounded by super studious chinese students, just trying my best to soak up that study mentality through mental osmosis. I've been doing alright, but that's not to say that I couldn't be studying harder. my habits have gotten better though. i'm sleeping earlier and waking up earlier, now participating in a daily 7am taiqi class. that's a really good way to wake up. though... i didn't do it this morning, but... i was tired after celebrating our little break before midterms this weekend. The class is also held in the afternoons, though, so i'll jump on that. i've been getting really far and am even starting to look like i know what i'm doing, to the extent that i've bought a pair of taiqi pajama-looking things (white) that i'm wearing when i practice now. good for the cooler weather.
but other than the above, not much has been going on. our department is having a 50th year celebration today that they've been trying to get me to participate in for three weeks now. it was slightly ridiculous. they were basically asking me to skip my classes and practice daily a dance routine that looks more occidental than oriental, all for the sake of departmental pride. i've never been much for school pride. so i lied my way out of the situation multiple times. my current lie is that i'm not even going to be in town tonight. that might be a little awkward when i show up to watch, but... that's life. in china, at least.
really, though, you have to be here to understand why i straight up lied to these people. the teacher in charge, mrs. zhang, is absurd. it took me half an hour to convince her that i couldn't participate, this after telling her i wouldn't be in town for the show, i wouldn't Ever skip classes for the practices, and that my spoken chinese was nowhere near good enough to be an m.c. She just kept talking about random things, not letting me drop the subject or leave or anything. i very well could have starved talking to that woman, fallen to the floor gasping for air, and been garrotted by chinese elves, and she wouldn't have stopped talking for one second. she's one of those people who don't even look at you when they're talking to you, but just appear to be practicing a speech for some later time. she's quite annoying.
a female german student related a story to me that absolutely puts mrs. zhang in perspective. the german, tina, tried to get out of the dance routines, saying that she had no interest and so on so on. mrs. zhang called her (whoa man this woman loves to call you on the phone and say things in chinese at a viciously fast speed and ending the sentence with the phrase "keyi ma?" which basically means "that sound good?" and then you say "hao de" "okay" and you're suddenly committed to giving a speech about particle physics to a group of 500 freshmen. thank the lord she doesn't have my number) and said that she needed to continue the dance routine, and all of the other germans were doing it. so she finally agreed. later, she talks to the other german girls. they tell her that mrs. zhang told them that she, tina, had been the one who wanted to do it and because she wanted to do it, the other germans had all agreed to do it. ree-diculous.
but anyway, i got out clean. and i have midterms next week. and i should be studying. but i've started watching the second half of the second season of battlestar galactica (emmet got me hooked on that one) and it's engrossing. i can't hang it up. now i'm downloading the third season as well that's just now started playing on tv in the states. man, tv is peligroso. even when i don't have a tv here, i still find ways to watch it. but i've also been watching some interview shows from hong kong that are pretty interesting and, more importantly, in chinese. perfectly understandable, crystal clear chinese. if you've heard fujian dialect or any other dialect of chinese, you can really appreciate what i mean by pure, standard mandarin chinese. oooh. sends shivers down my spine. say it again. mufasaaaaa. ooooooh.
one hour and 38 more minutes until the season3ep2 is downloaded.
ooh, i've been teaching some, finally. tutoring. at a cafe nearby. one student, kiki, is taking a class on british, canadian, and aussie history. so i go through the text with her and explain where necessary. that's friday night. tonight. saturday night, i teach four students whose level is so-so. good vocabularies but not stellar spoken english. so we pick topics and discuss. tomorrow night's topic has to do with obstacles to getting a good job. they prefer work-related topics, as they are all in the work force. and on sunday, i meet with one student, neko, who is working for an american boss and wants to work on her conversational english. she'll also bring me emails and things she is writing to correct. all fairly easy work for pretty good pay. and, as my cash flow is limited nowadays, it's necessary work. and it reminds me what i liked about teaching.
1:34
there's this track and field thing at the beginning of december that i'm going to run in, but i really am not in the best shape. it's just fun to be running again, though. three friends and i (two americans, one swede, one german) will run the 4x400 and hopefully win or be close. and then the swede, named martin, and i will run the 5k. and it has been a loooong time since i've run a 5k. it's not the distance that bothers me, i can run forever. it's the speed that will wreck me. we're working on 1000 meter intervals to pace ourselves, but it's hard going. esp since i was running three weeks back and pulled a muscle in my upper thigh when sprinting. it's since healed, but i've been training less because of it. i need to step it up in the next couple weeks, if i hope to be competitive.
1:30
and there's more going on, i'm sure, just can't think of it. the weather is finally starting to chill. still wearing shorts, though. and flip flops. but i wear those more for the sake of playing tuoxie gaoerfu (sandal golf) with tom the american. we've gotten quite good at hitting small targets at sizable distances. that reminds me, i need to be throwing the frisbee around a little more. i have a good frisbee. it should be getting more use.
1:27
i put taiqi pix on my flickr page. i have a pro account now and so all of my old pictures are back up. check them out at your leisure. www dot flickr dot com slash photos slash elliotbyrne
i'm not quite sure why i just spelled out that website, but maybe there is some rules to blogger that i half remember that has something to do with urls. you can do the math, though, so no biggie.
1:23 taking forever.
i'm gonna go for a walk or something. stretch the legs before taiqi. pEace
so then, in the spirit of this blog, let's sum up: I arrived here in Xiamen and set myself up at Xiamen University, finding lodgings in the dorms here (23 usd a month) and living with two other cool guys (akinobu from japan and daniel from indonesia) as well as right next to a quasi-old friend from the states. I'm still studying chinese, taking the fourth year classes at the OEC foreign students department here at XU. I think I've said enough before about the language being difficult, so I won't go into that, except to say that it is still difficult.
I've been spending a lot of time in the library, surrounded by super studious chinese students, just trying my best to soak up that study mentality through mental osmosis. I've been doing alright, but that's not to say that I couldn't be studying harder. my habits have gotten better though. i'm sleeping earlier and waking up earlier, now participating in a daily 7am taiqi class. that's a really good way to wake up. though... i didn't do it this morning, but... i was tired after celebrating our little break before midterms this weekend. The class is also held in the afternoons, though, so i'll jump on that. i've been getting really far and am even starting to look like i know what i'm doing, to the extent that i've bought a pair of taiqi pajama-looking things (white) that i'm wearing when i practice now. good for the cooler weather.
but other than the above, not much has been going on. our department is having a 50th year celebration today that they've been trying to get me to participate in for three weeks now. it was slightly ridiculous. they were basically asking me to skip my classes and practice daily a dance routine that looks more occidental than oriental, all for the sake of departmental pride. i've never been much for school pride. so i lied my way out of the situation multiple times. my current lie is that i'm not even going to be in town tonight. that might be a little awkward when i show up to watch, but... that's life. in china, at least.
really, though, you have to be here to understand why i straight up lied to these people. the teacher in charge, mrs. zhang, is absurd. it took me half an hour to convince her that i couldn't participate, this after telling her i wouldn't be in town for the show, i wouldn't Ever skip classes for the practices, and that my spoken chinese was nowhere near good enough to be an m.c. She just kept talking about random things, not letting me drop the subject or leave or anything. i very well could have starved talking to that woman, fallen to the floor gasping for air, and been garrotted by chinese elves, and she wouldn't have stopped talking for one second. she's one of those people who don't even look at you when they're talking to you, but just appear to be practicing a speech for some later time. she's quite annoying.
a female german student related a story to me that absolutely puts mrs. zhang in perspective. the german, tina, tried to get out of the dance routines, saying that she had no interest and so on so on. mrs. zhang called her (whoa man this woman loves to call you on the phone and say things in chinese at a viciously fast speed and ending the sentence with the phrase "keyi ma?" which basically means "that sound good?" and then you say "hao de" "okay" and you're suddenly committed to giving a speech about particle physics to a group of 500 freshmen. thank the lord she doesn't have my number) and said that she needed to continue the dance routine, and all of the other germans were doing it. so she finally agreed. later, she talks to the other german girls. they tell her that mrs. zhang told them that she, tina, had been the one who wanted to do it and because she wanted to do it, the other germans had all agreed to do it. ree-diculous.
but anyway, i got out clean. and i have midterms next week. and i should be studying. but i've started watching the second half of the second season of battlestar galactica (emmet got me hooked on that one) and it's engrossing. i can't hang it up. now i'm downloading the third season as well that's just now started playing on tv in the states. man, tv is peligroso. even when i don't have a tv here, i still find ways to watch it. but i've also been watching some interview shows from hong kong that are pretty interesting and, more importantly, in chinese. perfectly understandable, crystal clear chinese. if you've heard fujian dialect or any other dialect of chinese, you can really appreciate what i mean by pure, standard mandarin chinese. oooh. sends shivers down my spine. say it again. mufasaaaaa. ooooooh.
one hour and 38 more minutes until the season3ep2 is downloaded.
ooh, i've been teaching some, finally. tutoring. at a cafe nearby. one student, kiki, is taking a class on british, canadian, and aussie history. so i go through the text with her and explain where necessary. that's friday night. tonight. saturday night, i teach four students whose level is so-so. good vocabularies but not stellar spoken english. so we pick topics and discuss. tomorrow night's topic has to do with obstacles to getting a good job. they prefer work-related topics, as they are all in the work force. and on sunday, i meet with one student, neko, who is working for an american boss and wants to work on her conversational english. she'll also bring me emails and things she is writing to correct. all fairly easy work for pretty good pay. and, as my cash flow is limited nowadays, it's necessary work. and it reminds me what i liked about teaching.
1:34
there's this track and field thing at the beginning of december that i'm going to run in, but i really am not in the best shape. it's just fun to be running again, though. three friends and i (two americans, one swede, one german) will run the 4x400 and hopefully win or be close. and then the swede, named martin, and i will run the 5k. and it has been a loooong time since i've run a 5k. it's not the distance that bothers me, i can run forever. it's the speed that will wreck me. we're working on 1000 meter intervals to pace ourselves, but it's hard going. esp since i was running three weeks back and pulled a muscle in my upper thigh when sprinting. it's since healed, but i've been training less because of it. i need to step it up in the next couple weeks, if i hope to be competitive.
1:30
and there's more going on, i'm sure, just can't think of it. the weather is finally starting to chill. still wearing shorts, though. and flip flops. but i wear those more for the sake of playing tuoxie gaoerfu (sandal golf) with tom the american. we've gotten quite good at hitting small targets at sizable distances. that reminds me, i need to be throwing the frisbee around a little more. i have a good frisbee. it should be getting more use.
1:27
i put taiqi pix on my flickr page. i have a pro account now and so all of my old pictures are back up. check them out at your leisure. www dot flickr dot com slash photos slash elliotbyrne
i'm not quite sure why i just spelled out that website, but maybe there is some rules to blogger that i half remember that has something to do with urls. you can do the math, though, so no biggie.
1:23 taking forever.
i'm gonna go for a walk or something. stretch the legs before taiqi. pEace
