Today is the day that just will not end!
That is not to say its a bad day,
there have been some dark clouds in it,
but all in all it is just a long day!
A day where I started out with plans
that ALL got tossed in the toilet! haha!
BUT FIRST!!
In our listening class, we have ting xie.
If you have been following this blog, you have heard
me talk about this before.
I have been getting better at it,
with my character memory slowly becoming better!
It's exciting!
The goal for me has been to get all
the words correct. I have been getting them
basically right, but missing a stroke in two or three of them or something.
Lao Shi has begun to post the perfect score TingXie on the board.
When I got up this morning,before I did much of anything else
and before I looked in the book, I wrote down all of the characters
we had for today. I showed it to my teacher just to show her that
it is possible for me to remember things!
I had missed one stroke on one character.
When it was time for TingXie later in the class, I felt pretty confident
again.
I didn't get my paper back after class.
You see all those red check marks?
Now, I think I still missed a stroke on it, but
the teacher marked even that character correct and posted it.
The characters written in red are
很棒
Very Awesome!
I LOVE it when characters click in my head!
It feels great when things in this language
make sense to me!
I really do love learning it!
#ItsTheLittleThings
Work was a little busy again. Not too bad though.
My boss is heading off to a far off land to do some recruiting,
so things are a little high strung at the moment as we prepare things for that.
She, our mutual friend M and I all went to lunch today.
We are trying to go to lunch together every
Tuesday. I love that time!
After work, which was done by 4:30 {We were not as busy as yesterday
so I could have gotten off on time} I waited to meet with one of my teachers.
She had asked that I wait to meet her there
at 5 to go over the essay I wrote about life here at
SIAS.
It was to be used, she had told me, during my boss'
up coming trip. I was really hoping
{Though in the back of my mind knew I was wrong}
that they would be using a print out copy of my composition.
Or that it was going to be used in a PPT or some such presentation.
Nope.
I was to make a poster.
Shoot.
My penmanship is awful in English
now throw in a bunch of complicated characters?!
EEkkk!!
She had needed to change a few things around but over all my essay stayed the same which
I was pleased with as it meant I was not too off in how I wrote it.
She said that the only things she changed was to make it more authentic Chinese.
{Which, when you think of it, is kinda sneaky. This is to show to people they are
hoping to recruit, what is possible here at our school. But they are going to see a corrected and
Authentic Chinese essay....not just the one that a student wrote! But I digress! This doesn't surprise me anyway!} I came up with the idea of printing out the essay then cutting out the sentences and taping them before decorating the poster. She agreed, as I had said that I was pretty sure
my characters would be ugly and I wanted to make sure we could put our best foot
forward. I went out and had the copies made. {1.7 for four copies of the essay! I had two copies
each made of two different letter sizes} After about 20 minutes of cutting and working
to figure out the placement of the paper, another teacher came over and said it was ugly.
She didn't like that it had the white behind it when the poster board was orange, and thought it was
bad cause it didn't show that I knew how to write as well. 'Check about this with your teacher first'
she said. When I told her that the first teacher had agreed to it, she made a bit of a face. heh
The first teacher came over and was telling her she thought it would be fine since it would be different then the others and that would be special in it of itself. But when she still kept sneering at my poster, I went ahead and agreed to trash the last 20 minutes as well as the time I had
spent going to get the things printed out, and write the stupid thing out.
Half way through the poster, I had a thought.
This is being taken to recruiting exhibits.
The people looking at this DO NOT KNOW CHINESE!
NO ONE IS GOING TO READ THIS!
I called my teacher over and asked her about it.
"This is going to Indonesia with L Lao Shi, right?"
"Yes"
"They don't know Chinese! No one is going to read this!"
"I know! Isn't that crazy! I had the same thought!
But they want to be able to show it is possible to
learn it here. Just make it really pretty so they like to look at it."
Why why why then, did I write a 400+ character essay
that I had to hand write on this poster board?!
I then didn't want to put much effort into the
decorating of it.
Normally, I would have gone all out
gotten stickers and tape and ribbon
etc etc etc.
I was going to maybe to a border or something.
But then I realized that was the wrong attitude.
I tried not to take it too much to heart when my teacher then laughed at it and said
"Oh, aren't you so cute?!"
I think she thought it looked like a little kids drawing. And compared to the other
two that were decorating boards, she has a point.
I did win points though for having all of my characters written correctly.
Lost some when she didn't like how far I had indented one of my paragraphs and wanted me to draw something next to the words to fill in the space
Won the points back when I explained that in order to draw anything there I had
to also draw it in other places to make sure it didn't do the exact thing
she was trying to avoid, and point out that there was a 'mistake' there.
When it was finished she liked it better and said I was 'very smart' for thinking
about the set up and layout like that.
Ah, ya win some you lose some!
This was my work space for the hours
it took to finish that project.
Yes, that is Facebook up on my laptop. haha!
When I got done with it, the time was already 9 so most of my plans were already out the window.
{I have a new brainstorm that I am so super excited about and was planning
on doing today after work.}
I told my teacher that given the hours I was spending there after work, and having been at work up until doing this, I was not going to be able to get to the homework for her
class tomorrow. She gave me a pass on it and said it was fine.
When I returned to my room....it was time to help someone with their English homework.
She lives across the hall from me and use to be friends {kinda sorta}
with my first roommate. I have helped her a few times in the past,
and it is always nice to know that she feels comfortable enough
with me to ask for help with things like her English pronunciation.
This was for a presentation she is to give in one
of our classrooms tomorrow for what they are calling
"International Talk"
She asked me if I would come and watch her. Going to try to get a pass from work long enough
to go see her speak. She said "If you come and you see I forget something, you can just tell me what to say next!"
She asked me when I want to get married.
I told her I wanted to 10 years ago and she laughed a bit uncomfortably.
So I said "Do you know old I am?"
When she replied with
"Yeah. 23!"
the uncomfortable laugh made sense!
I don't know many 13 year old's that are ready for marriage either! haha!
She was pretty shocked {are you surprised?} and told me I don't even look over 25 at all.
She brought me something she had cooked. Its so yummy!
Its like a pierogi!!
When she left, I had just enough time to jump in the shower before the water ran out.
So, no workout again tonight!
:(
I really am not trying to slack off!
I'm trying to work out! Honest!
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow is another day to try and get to all of my list.
"Cause this is not what I imagined
but this is real life in the trenches
and we are living the dream!
Everyday comes with the promise
that it could be great if you want it!
And we are living the dream!
Those with the richest lives
That could be you and I
Lets answer the call to die
We could be satisfied!"
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