Happier

After much deliberation and consultation with both mother and Liu laoshi, the Academic director, I decided to give B-ban, the intermediate class, a shot. What a difference it made. Granted I am still spending up to four or five hours a night studying for my dictations and reviewing the lessons, today's class was much more enjoyable and easier to follow along. I'm also learning all kinds of useful words that seem so obvious in english but obviously aren't quite so when you don't actually know how to say them in Chinese. Hooray.

Mother and father are enjoying my blog perhaps the most as for the first time in the past nine years they can actually keep track of what I'm doing on a day to day basis. Mother likes my new photo... yes mom, that's the new man in my life. Ummmmmmm.

Every day the language becomes more accessible, and I am slowly but surely making better friendships. I still love my roommate, she's so cute, super chatty, eats a lot and is ok about being teased by her close friends for being chubby, which in my eyes she isn't, really. When she's not chatty it's just because she's sitting in front of her computer, which happens to be most of the day. Most nights she spends her time watching videos of her favorite Korean and Japanese pop stars on the Chinese version of youtube. She's obsessed - she has a collection of tiny photos that dangle from her cell phone of her two favorites of some Korean boy band. She likes them because the boys (most Korean boys, she says) - Hatty, please note - have very feminine features, or at least this is what I got out of our many conversations. Last night, however, she played about 2 hours of DDR, but sadly without a DDR mat for the floor she had no choice to tap tap tap at her keyboard, which invariably annoyed me. Now she's back to watching youtube videos. I like that her habits are reliable.

Lunch today was a pleasant surprise - cold noodles (which were served hot) but using the kind of noodles that are made fresh right in front of you by a cook who is busy twirling, pulling, banging, throwing, and more pulling a single chunk of dough into many long, skinny strands of noodle. I also eat a square of Dove chocolate probably once every hour or too. It's likely the MSG that's giving me this craving.

I feel like I'm pretty adjusted, which is obviously a good thing.