Thanksgiving Weekend

Thanksgiving weekend was fine, but pretty uneventful. Thursday was a pleasant meal at the Ormsbee's beautiful estate and playing with crazy Mya. That night I rode up to Edwards with Mom and my sister. I noticed that going back to Edwards no longer feels like going home to me like it used to feel. I don't really know where home is to me anymore. I have at least three different zipcodes that I can claim some sense of home at. High school and Mom in Edwards 81632, permanent mailing address and Dad in Berthoud 80513, and college and me in Boulder 80305, yet none of them really feel like home to me.

Anyway, it's nice to go to Edwards and get a dose of cold weather and yuppyville. Originally I was going up to see old friends who I haven't seen in what seems like forever, but that pretty much ended up falling through. Colin was sick, Bekah was busy... But I did get to see Greg and Catherine as they were gracious enough to give me a ride back down to Boulder (I didn't drive up myself and was going to ride back down with Raissa, but I wanted to leave sooner than she did).

While I was in Edwards I also managed to nail down a job at the Smiling Moose Deli for Christmas break. It involved me walking in and telling them I'd be in town for a month, pretty much the easiest job interview ever. I have worked at the Moose off and on over summer and winter breaks since 2002, and I kind of feel bad about going back there again this winter break. I feel like I should be going somewhere with my life, doing something interesting, not working in the same deli every winter break. But alas, I am going back to the deli. I actually kind of like working there, it pays decently, and I can walk there from my house in about 33 seconds.

More than the thought of working at the same place yet again, I think the idea of spending the whole break at Mom's house bothers me more. It makes me feel like a free-loader, which I guess is kind of accurate. Plus with Jim there I feel like I am horning in even more than usual. I mean, I have my own flippin' apartment this year, why don't I just stay down here and work? Well, winter-break jobs are easier to find in Edwards than in Boulder, and they pay better too. Anyway, I guess as long as I'm still in school a little bit of freeloading is probably acceptable, so this will probably be the last year of that.

Anyway, after sitting around the house just watching TV all day friday, I got a ride back down to the balmy front range with Catherine and Greg and it was good to see them and admitedly it was good to be back in Boulder. Then I worked and did homework the rest of the weekend. There are only two and a half weeks left in this semester! I got an A+ on my linguistics paper today, that was happy. Hopefully my other three final papers should come together easily enough...

Christmas Wishlist

I almost just put up a Christmas wishlist, but then I thought that if I did that then some people might actually buy me things and then I would feel guilty for somehow guilting them into spending money on me for christmas. So here is the revised Chirismtas wishlist:

1. Nothing. Please don't buy me anything for Christmas because I will feel bad about the thought of you spending money on me.
   
2. Hug. Hugs are nice sometimes.
   
3. Music. Burn me a copy some music that you already have.
   
4. Snow. Make it snow for Christmas.
   
5. Picture. Go online and print out a picture of a car that you would have liked to buy me or of a place you would have liked to send me on vacation or... well you get the idea. Actually, you could even just email me the picture, you don't even have to print it out.
   
6. Food. Write down one of your favorite cheap and easy recipes that you think I might like to try.
   
7. Pamper yourself. Take the money you would have spent on a gift for me and spend it on yourself. Go crazy.
   
8. Comment. Comment on my blog or on my facebook wall or something. It makes me feel popular.
   
9. Re-Give. Give me that crappy gift that so-and-so gave you last year that you can't wait to get rid of.
   
10. Animal. Donate an animal to a poor person.

Sad but True...

I admit, I was a fan of the MTV show Newlyweds. I liked the voyeuristic look into Nick and Jessica's private life. I liked seeing the "real person" side of their lives.

Anyhow, there have been rumors in the news for the past few weeks and months about their imminent break up. But yesterday those rumors were confirmed. Nick and Jessica are splitting up. Sad.

Thanksgiving

Things I am thankful for this year：
我今年感恩这些事：

1. Having had the opportunity to study abroad and do research in China last year.
   有机会去年去中国留学与做研究。
   
2. Living in one of the richest countries in the world where opportunities like that come relatively easily.
   住世界上最富的国家之一，这儿比较容易有这种机会。
   
3. Supportive parents who are happy I'm adding another semester of school.
   父母很支持我，很愿意允许我再加上一个学期的学。
   
4. I didn't have to go to Chinese class yesterday, nor will I have to tomorrow.
   因为放假，昨天和明天都不上中文课。
   
5. Good health.
   身体良好。
   
6. Bush's approval rating continues to slide.
   布什的支持率继续滑掉。
   

感恩节快乐！ Happy Thanksgiving!

Chinese in Public Schools

ABC News Article - "As China Grows, More U.S. Schools Teach Mandarin"

My first reaction to this article was, "that's awesome!" Foreign language education in this country is woefully undervalued and as a result Americans are some of the most chronically monolingual people in the world, so ANY news about more foreign language education in public schools should be good news. But the fact that Chinese is making it into more pubic schools and that some would even REQUIRE it is pretty cool.

But then my second thought was, "damn, that means more competition." Not very many Americans learn Chinese which means that I am in kind of an exclusive group (and a smaller hiring pool!). But if kids in Massachusets are learning Chinese from kindergarten, how will I be able to compete?! Luckily I am more or less ahead of the curve, so by the time those little snotheads finish college and move out into the big bad world, I will already be a veteran and hopefully will have learned another language or two by then. Mwahahah!

So I say, Let them learn Chinese if they must.

Global Warming Sucks

I'm sure most of you don't care what I think about the weather, but this is on the verge of insanity. It is nearing December and we have yet to have a big enough snow storm to even get snow on the roads. Except for one little storm that left an inch or two of snow on the grass, it has been mostly 60's and 70's with nice weather forecast through Thanksgiving. It's supposed to be cold and snowy already!!! This is disgusting!!!

Dangit!

Since Mom isn't working at Beaver Creek this winter, I won't be getting my free 5-mountain ski pass through her as I have in the past. So instead I was thinking that I would instruct at Beaver Creek myself over winter break and get my own pass that way. Unfortunately today was the new hire training session and I was supposed to have turned in my application and letters of recommendation on Friday which I didn't get around to doing. So now what am I going to do?! I'm kind of mad at myself. I might still try to apply for the position and see if they'll take me anyway. If not I guess I'll have to think of something else to do over break...

Majorly Linguistic

I have been interested in languages for almost as long as I can remember and have thought about studying Linguistics since I began my college search way back as a senior in high school (wow, I'm starting to feel old already). Despite my interest in linguistics, I decided to make International Affairs my second major instead of linguistics. At the time I thought international affairs seemed more practical.

Then while I was in China I started thinking that I don't really even like international affairs and that I should switch it to linguistics when I got back. Well once I got back, low and behold I had already earned too many credits toward international affairs to really be able to justify dropping that major, and so I resigned myself to not studying linguistics.

But then I started looking at the requirements for linguistics and realized that by delaying my graduation only one semester (graduate in December 2006 instead of May 2006), I should theoretically be able to finish my international affairs AND add a linguistics major (and of course there is Chinese which is already finished). So I made an appointment with my advisor to see if she thought it was feasible, and she thinks it is. So today I added my third major, linguistics!

In order to finish both the international affairs and linguistics majors by December, I am going to have to take full course-loads both semesters and maybe even an online course or too, but I am really excited about getting a third major in something that I think will be really interesting to me. And to do it all in only 9 semesters when plenty of people take more than that to do just one or two majors will be cool.

Other good news, it snowed the other day and it is snowing pretty hard out right now too. I love it!

Beijing 2008 Olympic Mascots

http://en.beijing2008.com/37/03/column211990337.shtml

Who's your favorite of the five Beijing 2008 Olympic Mascots? I think I like Yingying (the orange one). REally, I don't like any of them though. It seems like kind of a dumb choice of mascot. They seem kind of like Power Ranger Pikachus or something which seems more Japanese to me than Chinese, and the Chinese hate the Japanese, so I don't know why they would want to invoke such images. It is also pretty cheesy. When you add all five of the mascots names together and divde by two (look at just the first syllable in their two-syllable names), you get "Beijing Welcomes You" in Chinese (as if they were named Beibei Jingjing Welwel Comescomes Youyou). Kinda really stupid if you ask me. I personally think they should've chosen a killer panda ninja with bloody teeth that uses chopsticks as its weapon as the mascot. Yeah, that would be WAY cooler!! Although, I guess that would still be pretty Japanese-y with the ninja stuff and all... but at least it wouldn't be so lame

European English

First of all, you should still read my previous entry and vote for a language if you haven't already.

I found this on the online discussion board for my World Language Policy linguistics class and I thought it was pretty funny. I don't know how true it is though.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Euro-English, don't drop your German just yet!

The European Commission has just announced an
agreement whereby English will be the official
language of the European Union rather than German,
which was the other possibility. As part of the
negotiations, the British Government conceded that
English spelling had some room for improvement and has
accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would become
known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c".
Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with
joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k".
This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have
one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond
year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with
"f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling
kan be expekted to reach the stage where more
komplikated changes are possible. Governments will
enkourage the removal of double letters which have
always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil
agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the
languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as
replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from
vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil
hav a reil sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl
or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu
understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil
finali kum tru. Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be
speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.


- Author unknown

Poll

I was at Barnes & Noble yesterday killing time before going to see a free Spanish movie on campus. As always, I gravitated directly to the foreign language section. With 3+ years of Chinese under my belt and because I am not taking any language classes next semester (for the first time in SEVEN years!), I am thinking it's about time to start a new language. I was looking through all the books they had there and since I think all languages are pretty much equally awesome, I was unable to decide which one I want to start next. Here are the primary candidates:

• Arabic (165 - 206 million speakers) - It sounds awesome. People would likely be as impressed that I spoke Arabic as they often are when they learn I speak Chinese. Arabic would open up a very large portion of the globe and new culture to me. It would be pretty difficult to learn on my own though. Also, there is a lot of variation between different kinds of Arabic, so that would be difficult.
  
• Japanese (120 million speakers) - Also sounds pretty cool. I've already done half the work by learning Chinese (Japanese uses a combination of Chinese characters and its own syllabaries which are kind of like alphabets). Learning Japanese, I would be moving more towards a 'Mr. Asia' sort of identity, which I guess isn't really a good or a bad thing. I could go to Japan or to sushi restaurants and order sushi, but I can't afford sushi anyway. Japan is one of the major players in Asia, although it is becoming less important with the rise of China, although Sino-Japanese relations are a major point of tension, so knowing both of these languages could be an asset. Japanese would probably be easier to teach myself than Arabic.
  
• Korean (65 million speakers) - Going along with the 'Mr. Asia' idea, learning Korean would also move me more towards Asian specialization. There is a lot going on between China and the Koreas as well. China is North Korea's best friend. Also, I would venture to say that South Korea is almost as important as Japan these days in East Asia. Korean also sounds pretty cool, a little less delicate than Japanese I think. And with just a syllabary, it is considerably easier to learn/read/write than Chinese or Japanese. I don't really like Korean food though. Also, I kind of want to learn the bigger languages (those spoken by more than 100 million people) first, and this doesn't meet that criteria.
  
• Hindi (180 million speakers, plus 40 million Urdu speakers) - In its spoken form, Hindi is virtually identicaly to Urdu which uses an Arabic-based script instead of Sanskrit like Hindi does. I don't know how hard Hindi is to learn, but it would open up another large part of the world with over 200 million speakers. And I love Indian food.
  
• Portuguese (155 - 177 million speakers) - Since Spanish and Portuguese are so close, learning Portuguese would almost be like a vacation. I'm not sure how useful Portuguese really is, although I think Brazil is growing more and more important these days, I don't really know that much about it though.
  
• Romanian (24 million speakers) - This would be virtually useless to me, but it sounds cool and how many people do you know who speak Romanian? I would guess not many.
  
• Russian (about 155 million speakers) - I've heard Russian has some difficult grammar structures, but for the most part this shouldn't be all that difficult to learn and it represents a signficant population. Also, Vodka is good, but borscht is not so good.
  

So please vote for which one you think I should learn next. Thanks!

Halloween Wrap-up

It ended up being a pretty decent Halloween. Casey and Grant called me on Saturday and told me that I was going to be Mario and Casey was going to be Luigi at Grant's brother's halloween party that night. It was a decent costume and the party was a lot of fun. Than I went out last night with Amanda and her friends. I wanted to think of a new costume because I didn't want to be Mario all by myself with no Luigi, but alas I couldn't think of anything so I went as Mario again.

I just registered for classes and I think I'm going to die next semester. I am taking two upper-division economics classes and two upper-division political sciences classes and one critical thinking senior seminar international affairs class. They are all for my international affairs major and I have to take all of them in order to graduate in may. No time for fun, no time for any languages (well I could take Chinese, but that class has been pretty bad this semester and I'm done with the Chinese major requirements anyway, so I don't need it). I don't really even like the international affairs major that much, and here I am about to take a full load of pure international affairs classes!!!! It is going to take everything I've got to make it through next semester and graduate on time without going insane. In fact, it is making me kind of insane already just thinking about it.

Speaking of Chinese, I think this is one of the worst language classes I've ever taken, and I've taken more language classes than the average college senior (and a few bad ones too, like the Chinese class I had before going to China, for example). In 7 years of studying languages, I've never received anything less than A's, but I think I'm getting a B this semester. It's not that I'm not trying or that I'm not doing homework or missing classes or anything like that. I have done all the homework, have only missed a class or two, I prepare the readings like I'm supposed to. I really don't understand what's wrong!!! I am going to be pissed if after spending a year abroad I come back and can't even pull better than a B in Chinese! I'm not the only one in the class with less-than-satisfactory grades either. A few others feel like they are getting lower grades than they deserve too. But then there's Amanda who seems to be doing just fine for some reason. Anyway, wo xiang bu tong.

Also, mom wanted me to write more about selling the jag. I don't know what all there is to say. I couldn't afford to keep it anymore, so I sold it on eBay. It sold for a lot less than I was hoping it would and I lost a lot of money on it. It was an expensive lesson, but I guess in the end I am glad to be rid of it now. Dad says it was worth it to lend me the money for it just to see the look on my face when I won the auction two years ago, but I didn't get to see the face, so I guess I didn't get as much out of it, haha.