3/21 - the latest

3/21 Ugh….I hate the internet here. It's so dadgum unreliable. Oh, well….that's life. I'd love to put more stuff on my blog or YouTube, but I can't and it totally sucks. Facebook too.  I'm really excited about how my reading is coming along - my Chinese Culture textbook has been really helpful with that. It's all in Chinese characters with a few vocabulary words, so I have to do a lot of translating and all of that stuff. It's immersion, book style. I've been really struggling with my listening/oral vocabulary, but everyone tells me that is normal and it'll get better. Molly went with me to get a radio and the CRI station here has been pretty useful with my listening. I still don't have the vocabulary for it, but I am getting better at keeping up with the words and tones.  I went with Jay and Chiquita to get some stuff for my kitchen, so yay! I got a stove and pots and a few knives and junk. Great, I can cook now! Maybe I can make Mexican food for my friends :) That would be fun - I'd love to treat my friends for once! I think I am still very much in love with China, although I have been having some problems with the oral language. I have had some doubts about the use of my classes here, but I think they are ultimately good for me, as frustrating as my listening class may be. It is a lot of work in class, but once I get home, the workload is okay. Beijing was my romantic encounter with China, and Lanzhou has been my grounding in reality. Lanzhou also has a lot of history and cool things to see, but I'm not nice and comfortable in being able to speak English to everyone - I need to work here, it's not a vacation. The next thing I need to work on is my confidence. I am so "unconfident" (is that a word?) that it's become a little detrimental. I need to spend more time with people on the main campus - I guess I've been having too much fun on the West Campus. Janson and Freddy and Ethen are totally awesome, Zhu and Jing have become good friends too. I got a call from Sandy today and I'm meeting her here tomorrow, that should be fun - I was really surprised at how good her English was! One of my favorite things here is probably Chinese people talking about American curse words. Whenever Janson says "oh, sh*t" or something else, I just crack up...hilarious. Chinese people are great.  I really love QQ - it has been such a good tool to help me communicate and work on my 汉字 in a real situation. It's great! It doesn't really help with my oral communication, but I need all kinds of practice. PS - I might be on TV with some other foreigners to talk about life in Lanzhou, culture shock, and other stuff like that. It should be cool. I don't have any other info about it at the moment - It's going to be next Thursday. The taping, anyway - I don't know when it will air.