Summertime

Let's see... 9 days into summer vacation and I'm already kind of sick of it. Call me crazy, but I don't really like summer vacation very much. I kind of wish I were taking summer classes, but they are expensive. Luckily I've been pretty busy every day so far running errands or seeing people, or whatnot. Hopefully I find a job before the horrible summertime boredom sets in.

I got my grades for this past semester, and although they weren't very stellar, they were actually better than I was anticipating. I got an A in Phonetics and Phonology, and A- in both Study of Words and in Intro to Linguistics, so all my linguistics classes were in the A territory, which is fantastic but it's also what I was expecting. Then, in Political Geography, the class that I got a D on the first test, I managed to pull out a B-. I wasn't expecting anything higher than a C in that class, so I was very happy with that. Then, in American Foreign Policy, which I also messed up big-time and got a D on the final exam and wasn't expecting anything higher than a C, I got a B in. So I was happy about that too. Then, in my last class, Problems in International Relationsn, I got a lower-than-expected C+, but that's because I didn't really put any effort into the final paper which was worth 1/3 of our grade. I didn't put much effort in because I spent all my time trying to salvage that political geography grade instead and just didn't have time left over for that paper. So I'm actually not very upset about that. My cumulative GPA dropped this semester from a 3.487 to a 3.447. Hopefully, with any luck, I'll still be able to bring that up over a 3.5 next semester though.

In other summertime news, I've been looking for jobs, but not very hard. I figure I don't need to start getting desparate until the beginning of June. The study abroad thing in Jordan didn't pan out. The linguistics job that I applied for way back in March doesn't seem like it'll be an option. I might be able to get a gig doing a website for MiniTec, a company that makes the kind of Mini Coopers that I want to buy one day. Aside from that, I've called about a job here and there, and sent an email or two, but nothing very appealing. Can't someone just pay me to sit at home and work on my Chinese and go for bike rides and stuff?

One more summertime news item, as if it isn't hot enough for me here in Boulder (it's plenty hot, I have a pretty low tolerance for heat), I'm going to fly to Phoenix next week where it is some 20 degrees hotter. Why? No, it's not because I'm just that masochistic. I am going to visit two of my friends from study abroad in Nanjing whom I haven't seen in almost a year. I'm just going for 5 days, and hopefully the heat won't kill me (it almost gives me heat stroke just thinking about it). Hopefully I can con them into us going up into the mountains for some camping or something, it should be cooler there.

Here's today's Jack Handy quote:
Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: "Mankind". Basically, it's made up of two separate words - "mank" and "ind". What do these words mean ? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind.

Here's today's video. It is "Camisa Negra" by Juanes. He's Colombian. This is kind of a strange video, and I don't really see how it is at all related to the lyrics, but I like it anyway. One thing that bothers me though is that in the song he keeps saying, "tengo la camisa negra" which means something like, "I have the black shirt," yet he's actually wearing a white shirt in this video... I don't get it:


Alright, that's about it for now. Adios people.