Am I Evil?

It's embarassing to trip in public, but even more embarassing when on your way down you bring a few priceless artifacts along with you. I can't help but laugh at this poor person's misfortune; it must have been quite a sight to see:

Museum visitor trips, breaks Chinese vases

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On a completely random and un-related topic, I was looking through some pictures that one of my study abroad classmates from Nanjing had on the internet and I came across this particularly fun picture. It is a snack that we found in a grocery store on a short pit-stop on one of our field trips. We all got a pretty good laugh out of it.

A New Goal

I have a goal to have my credit card bill be less than $400 at least once in the next few months. I don't think I've had a single credit card bill lower than $600 since I got back from China in August. It's not that I'm just going out spending spending spending either, it pretty much all goes to reasonable things like food, groceries, gas (even though I don't drive very much), christmas gifts, and a little bit of fun for myself. Then every month there is also some large expense like car insurance, or car repairs, or textbooks for school, ski boots, etc.

I'll aim for $350 in March. That'll be nice.

Windy Weekend

Here's the weather forecast for the next few days from the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, located right here in Boulder, CO:

Today Breezy Hi 45°F

Tonight Partly Cloudy Lo 23°F

Sunday Windy Hi 40°F

Sunday Night Windy Lo 19°F

Monday Breezy Hi 54°F

Monday Night Windy Lo 21°F

Tuesday Breezy Hi 56°F

It makes me mad just seeing it in the forecast. I wonder if I should run to the hills for Sunday and Monday nights...


Here are my weekend plans:

1. Read, Read, Read. I haven't looked yet, but I'm sure I have over 300 pages of reading that I am supposed to do this weekend.
2. In addition to tons of reading, I think I also have a few homework assignments to do. One of them is a fairly interesting transcription exercise for my Language Sound Structures class.
   
3. Work. I'd rather not work, but I need the dinero.
4. Fix my bike. I think it just has a flat tire, but I just haven't got around to fixing it since it went flat like 2 months ago.
5. Swimming? I might try to go to the rec center and swim a few laps. As much as I loved swimming when I was younger, playing in the pool all day and swimming laps are completely different as I realized a few weeks ago when I tried to swim some laps. It's a real workout, it wore me out!!
6. Not watch VH1. VH1 is evil. I learn nothing of any real use from their addicting shows, yet somehow I easily get sucked into watching it for hours on end. So this weekend, I shall avoid at all costs channel 15 on the TV. Discovery, on the other hand, I think I'm allowed to watch too much of that because those shows are interesting and I learn things.
   

First Week of Classes

A week into this semester and I can already tell it's going to be a tough one. I anticipate that this will be my hardest semester yet. I am taking 18 hours (6 classes) plus an online class. Here are summaries of my first impressions of my classes:

American Foreign Policy: This class is taught by a young German woman who speaks nearly flawless English (leave it to me to be more impressed by her English speaking abilities than her teaching abilities or anything else that might be more important). This class is for the International Affairs major and I think it should go pretty smoothly. There is not a lot of reading, the teacher seems pretty laid-back, and it should be at least moderately interesting. One problem I already have with the course, though, is that the instructor seems very Euro-centric. I guess she has a bias being German and all, but she's always talking about Germany this, Germany that. She is working on her dissertation now and it's all about Germany too. Europe is fine and dandy, but I hope we talk about American foreign policy in Africa, Asia, and Latin America also in equal parts.

Introduction to Linguistics: I took two linguistics classes last semester (World Language Policy and Language in US Society), and am taking three this semester. I am surprised at how much I already knew in the introductory lectures for this class. We have talked briefly about the history of English and how linguists use comparative models to reconstruct language family trees and proto languages. It seems like this class is going to have a fair amount of overlap with the Language in US society class I took last semester, but hopefully we'll do some new stuff too. I can already tell that I am going to enjoy my linguistics classes more than my International Affairs classes though, I breezed through the readings this week much faster than for my IA classes.

Language Sound Structures: This linguistics class will be more about phonology and phonetics. We will be learning more about the sounds of human language, how we produce them, what the look like on a computer screen, aphasias (brain injuries or defects that affect language) etc. I actually already had a lot of exposure to this in a Science of Human Communication class that I took as a sophomore, but I remember it being interesting, so hopefully this class will be interesting too.

Study of Words: In this linguistics class we will be learning the etymology of English words. We will learn to identify different word bases, prefixes, suffixes, their origins and meanings. I think this falls more under the semantics branch of linguistics. The professor seems like a very smart lady who apparently knows (and teaches too maybe) Greek and Latin.

Political Geography: This class is for the IA major. I still don't really understand well enough what this class will be about to give a concise description. It is a 4000-level class that I am pretty sure I am going to work very hard in. There will be a lot of reading, and the tests are notorious for their difficulty. With every IA class that I take, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that I just don't really GET international affairs. I mean, I understand the material well enough to get satisfactory grades in the classes and such, but I just don't feel that I have a deep enough understanding of anything to really participate intelligently in class discussions or anything. If I put in enough effort (which will be a lot), I think I will learn some interesting things in this class, but this class also presents my highest potential for failure this semester I think. On the up side, the instructor, a PhD student, seems knowledgeable and experienced and interesting, although one of my friends who has had a class with him didn't like him, so we'll see.

Problems in International Relations: My third and final IA class this semester is my only class on Tuesday and Thursdays (all my others are on Mon. Wed. Fri) and it's at 8AM, so maybe I'll even be able to go skiing during the week sometimes! This class will also be a struggle for me. The class's title should actually be "Warfare" because it seems that we will be talking almost exclusively about War during the entire course. I had this instructor last semester and enjoyed him which is why I decided to take this course this semester. This course will be a challenge for me mostly because it has a massive reading load of approximately 200 pages per week (that's in addition to the other 100+ pages a week in my other classes). So this will be the semester of reading for me; I don't think I've ever had to read as much as I will this semester. Also, this class requires me to participate in class discussions a lot, something that I've never been good at even in topics that I am interested and generally confident about, much less in classes about warfare.

International Economics: Finally, this is the online course I am taking, also for the International Affairs major. This class should be my last requirement for International Affairs, and so hopefully I won't have to take any more IA classes next semester, just linguistics (and maybe I'll even have time to take a new language class... perhaps Arabic?). I don't really know what this "class" will be like, but the instructor for it, Kaplan, is probably one of the most well-known professors on campus. I have heard his name probably since my first semester here. I have heard nothing but praise for what a wonderful teacher he is, so maybe I'll have to go into his office and get some 1-on-1 time instead of just corresponding through email.

So yeah, it's going to be a hard semester, but I think I am ready and willing to buckle down and do what it will take. Already in just this first week I've already learned a lot of interesting things. Here are a few of them:

• I learned that the word sacrilegious is not spelled sacreligious and in fact, has little to do with religion.
• The Assyrian Empire at its peak existed between the Mediterranean Sea to the east and the Persian Gulf to the southeast.
• The better-built chariots pulled by horses weighed less than 100 pounds. This was largely out of necessity because the anatomy of horses didn't really allow them to pull large loads (their shoulders weren't broad enough to support large loads, and so the harnesses would push on their windpipe effectively choking them).
• Hindi, Urdu, Pashto, and Farsi are actually very distant linguistic relatives of English. They all stemmed from Proto-Indo-European (the great-Grandparent of English).

Finally, on a completely unrelated note, here is a funny e-mail that my mom sent me. I think I have seen these before, but it never hurts to laugh again. Things to Make You Go "Hmmm..."

• If big breasted women work at Hooters....., where do the one legged women work at.....IHOP?
• Can you cry under water?
• How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered?
• Why do you have to "put your two cents in"...but it's only a "penny for your thoughts?" Where's that extra penny going?
• Once you're in heaven, do you get stuck wearing the clothes you were buried in for eternity?
• Why does a round pizza come in a square box?
• How is it that we put man on the moon before we figured out it would be a good idea to put wheels on luggage?
• If a deaf person has to go to court, is it still called a hearing?
• Why are you IN a movie, but you're ON TV?
• Why do people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground?
• How come we choose from just two people for President and fifty for Miss America?
• Why do doctors leave the room while you change? They're going to see you naked anyway.
• If a 911 operator has a heart attack, whom does he/she call?
• Why is "bra" singular and "panties" plural?
• Do illiterate people get the full effect of Alphabet soup?
• Who was the first person to look at a cow and say, "I think I'll squeeze these dangly things here, and drink whatever comes out!"
• Or watch a white thing come out a chicken behind and think, "that ought to taste good."
• Why do toasters always have a setting that burns the toast to a horrible crisp, which no decent human being would eat?
• Why is there a light in the fridge and not in the freezer?
• When your photo is taken for your driver's license, why do they tell you to smile? If you are stopped by the police and asked for your license, are you going to be smiling?
• What do you call male ballerinas?
• Can blind people see their dreams?
• If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
• Is Disney World the only people trap operated by a mouse?
• Do the Alphabet song and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star have the same tune?
• Why did you just try singing the two songs above?
• Why do they call it an asteroid when it's outside the hemisphere, but call it a hemorrhoid when it's in your butt?
• Did you ever notice that when you blow in a dog's face, he gets mad at you, but when you take him for a car ride; he sticks his head out the window?

Snowing

Now it's snowing. The hatred has subsided... for now.

I HATE the wind!

I think I may have blogged a little bit a few weeks ago about my dislike for the windy winter we've been having here in Boulder this year, but this blog will be devoted ENTIRELY to expressing the profound feeling of hatred that I feel towards wind now. As I lay awake in bed last night unable to sleep because of the wind howling across my window and over my roof, I could think about nothing else besides my hatred and anger towards the wind outside. I was fuming. I was livid. I couldn't believe how mad I was at something seemingly as innocent as wind.

Yes, wind is absolutely my least favorite (most hated) of Mother Nature's weather types. A windy day/night here or there isn't so bad though. The first really windy day we had here in the fall, I was actually kind of awe-struck. I was impressed by the wind and how strong it was. I enjoyed walking through it and seeing it blow all the brown leaves off of the trees. I thought it was funny that they had to close the west entrance to the library because it was too windy. Yes, I kind of enjoyed the first windy day.

Then about two weeks later came another big windy day. Then about a week and a half later, another one. I thought these windy days were still a bit of a novelty and I didn't hate them so much. I thought it interesting that we had experienced so many windy days in such a short period of time, and I hoped and expected that we would experience no more.

I was wrong. I would guess that in the past 4 months or so, we have had windy days on average 2 days per week or week and a half. Where is all this wind coming from? Why is it so windy this year, but I don't remember it ever being even remotely this windy in years past? I bet our good ol' pall Global Warming is at least partially to blame.

I am getting so sick and tired of the regularity with which we have been having windy days that I have even begun to cherish the calm days in between, knowing that they won't last and that more wind is likely only a few days away. Anyway, it's time for me to go to school now, I just wanted to complain about this loathsome wind for a bit.

Skiing

Instead of going to work and earning some much-needed money this last week of winter break, I decided to drive up to the mountains and ski instead. I didn't manage to get up to ski at all during last semester, and mom got me new ski boots and a cheap pass this year, so I figured it was a good move.

I drove up Tuesday evening in clear skies and clear roads, no traffic; pretty much optimal driving to Edwards conditions. I skied in Vail on Wednesday, but the snow wasn't very good and it was cold and cloudy so I quit a little bit early and went home for a nap.

that night it snowed a bunch and I went to Beaver Creek on Thursday and wore myself out trying to ski through all the fresh powder (for those who don't know, skiing through a bunch of powder is a lot of work and it really can wear you out). It was a fun day but the powder wore me out and I had to quit a little bit early and go home for a nap.

Then after Mom got off work, we drove to Crested Butte. It was an OK drive, but she doesn't like the way I drive and then that is frustrating for me too sometimes. We got to the hostel at about 10 and were pleased to discover that we each had our rooms to ourselves (for those that might not know, hostels have bunk beds in the rooms and there are usually other strangers of the same sex in the same room with you.)

Friday morning we got up early, drove up to the ski mountain, had breakfast because we were famished, and then went and got ready for a day on the slopes. Having skied almost exclusively at Vail and Beaver Creek for the past 7 years or so, we had become quite spoiled and it didn't take us long to realize that we weren't in Kansas anymore (well, actually we were never in Kansas to begin with, but I think you get it). Since we had never skied there before, we decided to go on a free guided tour of the mountain. Al, a retiree from Shreveport Louisiana with a strong suthun drawwl showed us around the mountain until lunch time. At lunch we just happened to run into one of the Ski School supervisors from Beaver Creek that Mom has worked with for several years now. Crested Butte is a neat little mountain with some neat terrain and is a cute town too, so it was a nice trip.

We took our time driving back on Saturday, stopping at two other ski hills to check them out (Monarch and Ski Cooper). Then once we got home we spent the rest of the day doing absolutely nothing.

Today I met Grant and Casey (college buds) and some of Grant's friends at Vail. The snow wasn't good in the morning and the light was really flat so we had a hard time seeing where we were going. But we toughed it out and headed way back to Blue Sky Basin where the snow was a little better. Then after lunch time a storm rolled in and it got a lot colder, it started snowing a bunch, and the snow got a lot better for skiing but the light was even flatter and it was even harder for us to see where we were going. At one point we were practically skiing blind because we could not distinguish the terrain that we were skiing on, so we wouldn't know we were about to hit a bump until we actually hit it. It was not very fun.

Another not so fun part of today is that my skis kept coming off and inopportune times. The first two times they came off I just fell and was able to retrieve them and put them back on with little drama, but the third time a ski came off, it launched me forward onto my belly and I went skidding across the cat-track face first on my belly, over the edge of the trail, and tumbling down an embankment about 15 feet, which I then had to climb back up in several feet of snow. I'm sure it was a very comical crash for those who witnessed it, but it was kind of scary for a second. Anyway, I guess I'll have to take my skis in to see why they were popping off my feet today and get that fixed.

Anyway, tomorrow is my las day to ski and then classes start on Tuesday. I am mostly excited about my classes this semester. I will be taking 3 linguistics courses; Intro to Linguistics, Study of Words, and Language Sound Structures. Then I have to take some other classes for International Affairs too, but I'm not as excited about those. So that's what I've been up to lately, The End.

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On a completely un-related note, I had a weird dream the other night. It was a very long dream that I think went on for several hours, but the only part I can still remember is that I was at some big celebrity party with a bunch of famous people there. We were all eating hot dogs and I was sitting next to Brittany Spears, but for some reason she wouldn't talk to me, like she was really mad at me or something. And then we went outside to look at the stars, but it was the middle of the day and so none of us could see any stars, but we kept looking for them anyway. Brittany was still giving me the cold shoulder for some reason, maybe it was something I said.

No one ain't never done did it

Looking at stories on NPR today, I came across this lovely sentence in a summary of a story about two guys who are trekking to the North Pole solo:

No one has done reached the North Pole during the brutal months of eternal night with no airdrops of food and no pre-arranged rest stops.

I'm no grammarian or anything, but to see the NPR intellectuals write, "No one has done reached," I thought was humorous indeed.

Chinese Tidbits

Engrish.com is a website that catalogs and collects funny English usage from around the world, either on signs, or on clothing, or wherever. As English has grown in importance over the decades, so has its cool-factor, and now in many parts of the world people like wearing clothing with English written on it just because it looks cool. It is similar to how in this country people often get tattoos or wear shirts with Chinese characters, just because they look cool. I agree, they do look cool, but we mess up the Chinese just as much as they mess up the English. There was a story on NPR today about a Chinese American guy who has started a blog about botched Chinese tattoos he has seen in the United States. So for anyone who has ever wondered if Chinese and Japanese people laugh at the Chinese characters they come across here, the answer is yes.

Vacation Productivity

So I'm still not sure if staying down here in Boulder for the winter break instead of going to Edwards was a good idea or not. I was kind of hoping that I would be able to find a job down here for the break, but that didn't work out. My back up plan was so stay down here and straighten my life out, which includes things like cleaning my perpetually messy room, figuring out what to do with my life, read a book or something, and other things of that nature. I have been reading some books, but my room remains as messy as ever and I have about an equally foggy vision of what I want to do with my life after I graduate. Then one day when I was bumming around Boulder the other day I saw this article on the front page of The Onion, and I can totally relate:
The Onion - Plan To Straighten Out Entire Life During Weeklong Vacation Yields Mixed Results

Obligatory New Year Post

Well, 2005 was a heck of a year. I was in China for about half of it doing study abroad and that research thing. In 2005 I went to Kunshan and nearly froze to death in my Chinese friend's home for Chinese New Year; flew to Chengdu and ate hot pot and saw the world's largest Buddha, Western Sichuan (Tibet) and rode some rickety busses on scary really high mountain roads, saw some really tall Himilayan mountains, and enjoyed the lack of oxygen; passed through Beijing a few times; went to frigid Harbin for the Ice Sculpture Festival and saw some Russian architecture; climed Yellow Mountain (Huang Shan) for the second time, wasn't nearly as spectacular as the first time; took the train to Shanghai to catch my flight back to the states; spent a few days in Xi'an and did some prep work for our research project; went to northern Shaanxi province and did research; rode a bus to Yinchuan and ate a fried silkworm (only after I stuck it up my nose for comedy); and I spent 4 weeks in Ellensburg, WA where in addition to working on the research project, I also managed to go rafting, see a wiener dog festival, and spend a day or two in awesome Seattle. Then in August I finally came back to Colorado after being gone for almost a whole year. After getting back to CO, I moved into my first apartment with my friend Grant and got the best grades of my college career (except for my study abroad grades which were better but don't really count).

So it was pretty much a good year. As for 2006, I don't have any travel plans in the works, so it probably won't be as cool as 2005 was, but it should still be a good one. I am planning to graduate in December. After that, who knows. Hopefully I'll find a cool job or something. I'm thinking I might like to take my little sister's lead and go be a ski instructor for a little while after I graduate. The summer will be my only real chance to do something cool this year. One idea that I have been considering is trying to get some money to go somewhere and do some sort of linguistics research project that I can then maybe write an honors thesis paper about, but I really don't know what I'll do.

Here are some resolutions/goals that I have for 2006:
- Learn some Arabic.
- Graduate with at least a 3.5 GPA.
- Bike more.
- Waste less time on the internet.
- Work harder to be more financially independent.