Chinese-tastic Thursday

9-16

Chinese was... pretty good. I like it a lot. I'm starting to get the hang of it, but I'm not looking forward to when I haven't half-learned everything and it's all completely new. But we're getting there haha. But I like it.

Ed dem was ridiculous. It was ridiculous because we watched a half-hour movie about desegregation, specifically in the Boston public schools. It was so crazy. Some of it was expected, but some of it was so surprising. And just... you realize these kids had to deal with this stuff every day. Every. Day. It's like going to war for an education! So the discussion after that was soooo interesting.

Lunch with Julia, Chelsea, and Lexie, my across-the-hall mates. We were going to eat at Eastway or Rosie's, but they had to drop off some applications at the Student Center, so we went there first. Turns out the taste of Kent was going on today and it was in the SC because it was raining, instead of outside. It was soooo fun. Free samples of everything on campus?? Totally! I stuffed my face. Ok, it wasn't that bad. The Indian food was really good, of course. Jazzman's had coffee-smoothies. I had a bit, and then the entire reason for the Taste of Kent hit me and I had to go down to the real Jazzman's and buy a whole "mocha blast." But the food was free, so I thought I could "splurge" some. :-D

It was really good. After a short wizarding duel with Caleb, we went back to our dorm and started on homework. Except that I realized that the Chinese Tea hour was going on, and I didn't have too much homework, so I went.

It was really funny. Like, I felt like I was back home listening to the Karen girls. 95% of it went over my head haha. It was two older ladies (teachers) and one older man (also a teacher) and my teacher and one classmate andd.... a more advanced student who, I think, was minoring in Chinese. He mostly listened though. But yeah! They had good cake and chips and tea. I mindlessly ate the cake (it was like aunt cheryl's cake!) but then I realized I was STUFFED and I couldn't even take any tea. Which made them laugh because they thought it was typical American style to take the sweet stuff, but refuse (politely :-) the salty chips and tea. Haha. But yeah. They talked a lot, and sometimes my teacher would ask if I understood stuff and I'd be like, no in Chinese, and she'd explain at least the topic they were on. My other classmate's parents are actually from Taiwan, so he could catch about half of it. So that helped too. It was amazing how fast my Chinese went out the window the moment someone phrased a question differently than I'm used to. But it was funny, my teacher kept going, "they're Elementary I, use simple Chinese!" (in Chinese, but I caught the gist, and she said later that's what she was saying, haha). I think if I hadn't had those years of listening to Karen when I had no idea what they were saying, I would feel completely uncomfortable. But it actually made me really happy instead.

Wow that's a long paragraph. Obviously it was fun. Annnndd I could answer their questions if my teacher rephrased them to the words I knew. Then I mostly could do it, (supplemented with a couple English words, hahah). AANNNNDDD I saw the times for Spanish coffee hour, so that was exciting. I'm going to that next week, I'm pretty sure. I was happy it wasn't during any classes.

Homework. After Facebook. I'm really going to have to cut back on the Facebook as the semester goes on and my workload gets bigger...

Now I need to find some people to eat with. Until later, dear readers!

Oh ps. It's thunderstorming. I've been out when it's only raining, but it's legit thunder now. Yay...