Insomnianiac

First of all, no, insomnianiac is not a real word. And it probably isn't actually insomnia if you've only had it one night, but I had almost no sleep last night. Here are some signs that you might be having a sleepless night if you find yourself lying in bed thinking about these kinds of things:

• You start planning out what your are going to write about insomnia in your blog the next morning.


• You begin to wonder, what is the etymology of the word insomnia? I remember talking about it in my etymology class last semester, but I don't remember the details. I think in- is a prefix meaning "not," and SOMN- is a base meaning sleep?


• How do you say, "didn't sleep a wink" in Spanish? Turns out it's no pegar ojo or pasar la noche en claro. And in Chinese? Um, I have no idea. I guess just 睡不好觉。


• Your watch just beeped on the hour again and you have lost count. Is it 4:00am or 5:00am now?


• In an effort to fall asleep, you try to force your brain to shut off by focusing on something, like blackness, or an imaginary dot and try not to let your brain think about anything else. But then you are focusing so hard that you start think about how hard you are focusing on not thinking about things like focusing on not thinking.


• You realize that you are finally starting to doze off, but that realization wakes your right back up.


• Just as the sun starts coming up in the morning is when you finally nod off and get some quality slumber. Unfortunately you have a hard time sleeping when it's light outside, so you end up only getting a few hours of hard-earned sleep.

Luckily I don't have this problem very often as I think I inherited my mother's skill at sleeping. The last time I couldn't sleep like this was back in April when I had MINI Mania (Part I, Part II). I just couldn't stop thinking about all things MINI. Last night was actually kind of similar because I just bought a new (old) road bike, and I kept thinking about how much fun I'm going to have with it and stuff and all the upgrades I want to get for it. Here's a picture of it (you can click on it for a full-size version if you want to):



I'm pretty happy about it. I found it on Craigslist and drove down to Aurora with Casey to get it last night. It was a little over $100, which I think is a pretty good price. I've been wanting a road bike for awhile now and this will be a good way for me to get into road biking for cheap. It's an older Motobecane bike (1970's I think?), but it's all in great shape and has some character to it. I think riding a decent old bike is pretty equivalent to driving old cars. It may not be quite as good or as fast or as efficient as a new one, but they just provide a different kind of feel that you can't get on the newer ones. Also, it has some neat details, like the frame is lugged which just has more neat visual details compared to a non-lugged frame. Also, when I buy a newer bike someday when I have more money, this bike will be perfect to build into a fixed-gear single-speed, which is also something I've been wanting for a long time; perhaps even longer than I've had MINI Mania...

New Fanciness!

So, I spent far too many hours today playing with my blog making it pretty and stuff. Except for all of the functional sorts of codes (the ones that make the blog work properly), all the cosmetic stuff is my very own handywork. I think I like it. Let me know what you think, if you have any suggestions for fonts, colors, formatting, etc...


Update: Hmm, I see that Internet Explorer is messing things up... I'm working on that...


Update 2: After clicking around a bit it seems that ALL blogs on blogger when viewed with IE on a Mac have that top bar all messed up, so it's not my fault. Sorry...

You should be using Firefox anyway. It's better (for most things. Sometimes IE is still better) . You can download it for free here:
http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

Strange Dreams

I've been having a lot of dreams the past couple nights. Does that mean I'm not sleeping well, or that I'm sleeping really well? Here are some of the snippets that I remember.

- I was walking down a dirt road to try to find Casey's car when suddenly I realized that there were venomous snakes all over the road and whenever I jumped away from the bite of one I was jumping right into the strike zone of another. I've actually had this kind of snake dream before and it's very unpleasant.

- Ding (a.k.a. Justin), Da (a.k.a. Amanda) and David were sitting on a couch together and I was laying on a different couch. They started wrestling with each other about something and David's foot ended up in Ding's mouth. Wrestling continued for a few more minutes and then Ding stopped and looked really uncomfortable/sick. He said that his tongue tasted like feet. He then kneeled over and started to do what looked like praying to Buddha, but then he started vomiting. Luckily Da was holding a plastic bag for him and she threw it away and the wrestling continued.

- I somehow gave Da pink and blond dreadlocks, and she looked pretty cool with them.

- I was crawling up The Hill in Boulder in a sleeping bag and it was pitch black out and really creepy. I had a flashlight that I was shining in peoples houses, and then suddenly I wondered, why am I crawling up the hill in the pitch black in a sleeping bag shining my flashlight at the houses? Granted, it is a pretty cool flashlight, but in the dream I was having trouble operating it very efficiently, pretty frustrating...

- Hmm, it seems like there was one more that I was going to try really hard to remember, but alas, I don't remember it. Anyway, they have all been kind of strange dreams, nay?


- Oh, now I remember. At camp we learned a dance to this one song that we all then performed on this special "International Day." Anyway, I dreamt that one night at camp they put this song on and we were all supposed to do the dance that we had learned for it. Well, we all did it, but we weren't very excited or energetic about it. At the end of the dance, the song ended and there was complete silence for like 5 seconds, and then the "DJ" or whatever, trying to get us all pumped up said something like, "Does everyone love that song or what?!" really energetically. Again, silence, and then some Jamaican guy says apathetically in a Jamaican accent, "yes, we love it." And then someone coughed. I thought it was so funny, that I think I actually woke up laughing.


And today's YouTube video... I can't say I'm a big Justin Timberlake fan, but this song Sexyback is pretty catchy, and I like the suits that he wears in this video.


PS. After having to go through my blog and delete a barrage of spam comments, I am going to require that you people fill in a word verification thing to post comments. It's pretty simple. Basically on the comments page below the window where you type your comments, there will be some random letters or numbers that you will have to type into another box. This is a way to verify that you are a real human being and not a spamming computer. I know it's kind of annoying, but so is deleting a bunch of spam comments... Thanks!

Blogging

Hmmm... I haven't blogged much lately. I've been pretty busy between an almost-full-time job, moving, house-sitting, socializing, and sleeping. Last night I finally managed to get all my crap unpacked and crammed neatly into every spare nook and cranny in this little room in Granny's basement. It was kind of like a puzzle figuring out where to put everything so that it wouldn't have to end up just living in the middle of my floor permanently (that spot is reserved mostly for my dirty clothes). I did have to move a few of Dwight's old appliances out into the living room to make room for my desk, but I think that's probably ok.

Despite being a small room in Granny's basement with only one electrical outlet (one with no 3-prong outlets at that!), I actually kind of like this room. It has a lot of character with the vintage 1960's red carpet and painted oak walls and dark shutters. Also, perhaps its best feature, it isn't a million degrees like my apartment was. It is also a shorter walk to the bus stop, and a shorter bike ride to school as well. And with the money that I'll save on rent I can maybe afford to have more fun. (And even though it only has one electrical outlet, at least I got some wireless cable internet set up, so I won't have to do dial-up this year).

In other news, my new job is going fine. I'd rather get paid to not work of course, but who wouldn't... Speaking of work, I should probably do some work tonight before I go to bed.

Now that I'm not at camp anymore, I can start adding YouTube videos again. In honor of my lovely new black MacBook, here is a funny spoof on the Mac commercials.

Back Home

The past few days have been very good for me. I don't really know where to start, so I'll just go chronologically.

First, I got a new job! When I decided to go off to Chinese camp I was hoping that somehow I would be able to line up another job for when I got back, and I did! Actually, I applied for this job way back in March and only applied to the Chinese camp after it seemed that I would not be getting this job. I figured things would probably work out somehow, and I was right. I start on Thursday and I get $20/hour!!! I will be working about 30 hours per week until school starts, and then I'll probably go down to 20 hours. I am pretty excited about it.

Camp ended Saturday and then we had to clean everything up. I stayed up all night chatting with some of the other counselors and then made the mistake of going to bed at 5:30 when I had to be on a bus to Minneapolis in just over an hour. I woke up in a panic at 6:50ish and saw that the bus was already there waiting for me and I hadn't even packed any of my things yet! I don't think I've ever packed so quickly before. When the bus got to Minneapolis three of the other counselors and I went to the Mall of America. However, because the Minneapolis - St. Paul International Airport no longer provides luggage storage since 9/11, we had to take all of our luggage with us to the mall. To use a bit of Chinglish, it was feichang not convenient. I think I will be writing the airport a strongly worded letter expressing my irritation with their lack of storage facilities.

As for the Mall of America, it's big. I wanted to buy a new pair of pants there since my current pair of jeans was worn out to the point that it probably wouldn't have survived another trip in the washing machine. Buying jeans always seems like such a daunting task though, so I chickened out and just bought a shirt instead.

That night I didn't get much sleep either, and then this morning I was off to the airport where I picked up a Newsweek to read the article in it about the Chinese camp that I have been working at. I openned it up and in the picture were people I knew!! The girl on the left was my student! Crazy...

And now I'm back in CO. My car was up at Dad's house, so I rode up there with him when he got out of work. He surprised me with an awesome coming home gift. A new (really nice) computer! And an iPod! And some other accessories. Man, am I spoiled! Hopefully I'm not spoiled rotten though.

I am mostly glad to be back in CO and out of the Minnesota humidity and not having to supervise the children anymore, but I will also miss my co-workers from camp (one girl in particular). But such is the way of things.

Ok, I need to get back to playing with my new toys.

Campy

Hmm, I haven't posted in awhile. I guess there are two reasons for that. One, there's no time. What little free time I have is spent napping, planning my classes, or napping. The second reason is that the internet hasn't been working the past two days.

That's ok though because I don't actually have a whole lot to say. We are almost finished with our first group of 2-week students (they will be leaving on Saturday). I have become pretty used to the camp schedule, but the job is still kind of stressful. I am finding that while I enjoy teaching kids Chinese, I don't enjoy having to deal with hyper kids so much and getting them to focus and whatnot. Anyway, there are only like 2.5 weeks left. I've almost been here a month already? Crazy. Alright, well I have to go prepare for my class... Today we're teaching body parts.

6 Minutes

Let's see, I have about 6 minutes and 20 seconds to write something before the next camp activity starts. Being a camp counselor really makes a person learn to use every single second of the day. How long does it take to walk from the office to my cabin? 1 minute; well, 59 seconds to be precise. How long does it take to get all of the kids in your cabin to walk to the bell (which is near the office)? A lot longer than that. One kid is trying to catch an insect and feed it to a spider, for the 10th time in the past 5 minutes. Another kid forgot that he had to go to the bathroom. The other three are playing tag, and if I'm lucky, two or three kids are actually paying attention and are ready to go with me to the next activity. When I'm not supervising or teaching some activity, or trying to get campers to follow directions in Chinese, I am frantically planning my next activity which involves thinking of new words to teach, and making a worksheet with these words, and drawing pictures depicting the word.

Hmm, 2 minutes, 27 seconds left. I forgot what it is like to be a 10 year old (there are 7-11 year olds at camp right now, about 40 of them. My cabin is 10-11 year olds). Was I like this when I was 10? Many of them simply don't listen. Can they hear me? Did they hear me say it the first 6 times? Have they already forgotten that I told them not to do that exact thing only 2 minutes and 27 seconds ago? Do they think that I have forgotten that I told them not to do that? Who knows...

I am really enjoying seeing these kids learning Chinese right before my eyes though. Most of them could not even say "hello" when they got here on Monday afternoon, and many of them can already say several kinds of sentences and more individual words. It's pretty neat.

Alright, time's up! C ya!

Almost Here

The first batch of kids comes to camp on Monday. Right now we have our first 24-hour time-off period. We've been doing orientation and set-up activites since I got here and it's all gone pretty well. I'm a little nervous that I don't really know what I'll be teaching on Monday, but I think I will be teaching a nature class and taking the kids on a little nature hike where I will try to incorporate some nature-related chinese. I wouldn't be too worried if it were just littler kids and I could teach them "tree," "lake," etc., but I am more worried about the older kids who might speak more Chinese and who will ask harder questions. I think I'll do ok though and hopefully the kids will enjoy it. I'm thinking I'm gonna try to get them to use compasses too.

I think that I am going to learn more Chinese myself this summer than any of the kids attending the camp though. It's really great practice because the staff all speaks chinese to each other more than English. I love it. The camp that we are at is pretty neat. Some of the buildings are a bit, um, 'rustic' (aka, old and kind of gross), but it is on a lake and I think overall it is a neat camp. The mosquitos haven't been eating me too bad and the weather has been ok. I think I am more afraid of getting a tick than anything else.

Hopefully I'll have a more interesting post next time after the kids have come. Zai jian!

Orientation

I don't have much time to write anything because I'm going to a devensive van driving class in about 5 minutes, but so far I am enjoying camp. We are in orientation for a few more days. I have enjoyed orientation because all the counselors from all different languages are at camp together. I love being surrounded by all these multi-lingual people. Every single one of the Chinese staff (there are about 20 staff altogether) speaks a third language besides Chinese and English. I'm getting to speak lots of Chinese, quite a bit of Spanish too, and I am listening to all kinds of other languages like French, German, Norwegian, Swedish, and even Finnish. Anyway, time to go learn to drive a van defensively. Zai jian!

Goin' to Minnesota to teach them kids Chinese.

So... does anyone remember how about a month ago I applied to be a counselor at a language summer camp in northern minnesota for the summer? Probably not. In fact, I'm not even sure I mentioned anything about it here. Well, about a week ago they got back in touch with me and wanted to do an interview with me. I told them that I didn't think it would work out logistically and that I would withdraw my application. The lady emailed me back asking me to reconsider, and I did. Yesterday around noon I interviewed with her, she offered me a job, I decided to accept, and now I have a 6:30 AM flight to catch to Minneapolis, MN. I'll be there through July 16th teaching kids Chinese and stuff. I haven't sat down and done the math, but mental math is enough to calculate that I will be making pretty bad money (it's probably like minimum wage), but I figure it beats making $0/hour sitting around here looking for jobs. Plus, this way I get to use some Chinese and pay homage to the motherland or northern minnesota where my ancestors emigrated from trying to escape the bird/mosquitos some two generations ago. Anyhow, hopefully it'll be fun! C ya!

There is no video for this entry because I have to go now and don't have time to find one. Sorry.