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.

凤凰城 - Phoenix

Phoenix was hot, believe it or not. I had a good time though, and it was good to see my friends from study abroad in China. We ended up staying inside much of the day because my two friends aren't really morning people, so they didn't usually roll out of bed until after noon or 1:00. Also, by that time it was so hot out that it was just better to stay inside anyway. We didn't really DO anything the whole time I was there and I don't think we strayed much more than 5 miles away from Natalie's apartment. We did rent some fun cruiser bikes that made getting around pretty fun and easy though. Our primary activities involved going to the grocery store, making food like eggplant lasagne, BLT's, and Chinese stir fry, eating out at a tasty vegan restaurant, at a friendly Indian restaurant, and a Mediterranean restaurant. We also spent a lot of time just sitting around on the internet and listening to music, and meeting Natalie's friends. I got to drive two kinds of cars that I'd never driven before (Honda CRV and a Volvo S40). The S40 was more fun, but I was less impressed with it than I was with the CRV. My friends complimented me on my authoritative parking skills. On my last day there we helped Natalie move out of her apartment into a room in a house with a bunch of messy nerdy boys.

It was a good trip and I'm glad I got to go, thanks to Mom's help. Also, I would recommend to anyone that they fly Southwest Airlines. They have FREE SEATING!!! Instead of getting assigned seating and having to sit in the middle seat next to stinky or annoying people, you can sit wherever you want once you get on the plane and hopefully avoid those kinds of people and instead sit next to attractive people. It is great.

And here's today's video, Helena by My Chemical Romance. I like it because the lead singer is so intense, and I like the black/red color scheme.

Job(less) Anatomy

I will be sure to let everyone know the very moment I get a job. In the mean time, I'm still looking.

I made some money this weekend 'babysitting' my cousins. They are old enough that I didn't really have to do any actual babysitting (no diaper changing, for example), so it was pretty easy. I really just had to spend the night there, but I ended up spending most of the days there too because their house is air-conditioned, unlike my apartment which is more like a sauna without the steam.

Aside from watching their cable and lounging in the AC, we also went to the Body Worlds exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. It was really amazing. It is an exhibit of real human bodies which have been dissected and preserved. It is like doing a cadaver lab without all the slicing and dicing and fainting. I would highly recommend that you go see it if you have a chance.

So, it was a pretty good weekend. Tomorrow I am helping my roomate Grant's parents move to their new house, and then I have to get ready to leave for Phoenix on tuesday morning.

Here's today's Jack Handy quote:
I'd like to be buried Indian-style, where they put you up on a high rack, above the ground. That way, you could get hit by meteorites and not even feel it.

And here's today's video of Shakira shaking her anatomy in "These Hips Don't Lie":

And finally, as a little bonus, here's a Natalie Dee cartoon called "giraffes are not encumbered by the rules of society."

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.

What I'm Doing

What I should be doing right now: furiously writing my big paper and/or studying for my test-from-hell tomorrow.

What I'm actually doing now: blogging.

What else I'm doing at the moment: slowly writing my big paper. kind of studying for my test-from-hell tomorrow. listening to soothing classical music. wondering if I'll ever start playing the piano again. reading Jack Handy quotes. thinking about how tired I'm going to be tomorrow. thinking about how drunk I might be tomorrow night after I'm done with everything. thinking about how glad I am that I freaked out earlier in the week, so now I'm actually not as far behind as I might have been otherwise. thinking about my future (immediate, and less immediate). wondering what on earth I am going to do this summer. thinking about how much money I've spent on Starbucks double-tall lattes this week. wondering why it has taken me until this late in my college career to discover caffeine. thinking about fast custom old mini coopers. wondering how well I've done on some of my other final projects and exams and when I will find out. being pissed that I was .5% away from an A in my study of words class (I got an A-. I figure if I had earned just 3 more points over the whole semester, I would have an A).

Ok, that's enough for now. Back to work, but first, here's today's Jack Handy quote:
Too bad you can't buy a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin real fast and freak everybody out.

And also, here is today's video:

Our President and James Blunt

When asked what was his best moment since taking office in 2001, Dubya said, "I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5lb perch in my lake."

What a dolt.

Anyway, here's the whole (short) article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4982338.stm


On an unrelated note, here are five reasons why I don't like James Blunt (see his video below):

1. The first two lines of this song are, "My life is brilliant. My life is brilliant."
2. Later in the song, after some pretty girl smiled at him on a subway, he's bummed that he can't be with her, but luckily he has a plan: "I've got a plan. You're beautiful. You're beautiful. You're beautiful, it's true." First of all, that isn't a plan. That is merely a statement of truth. Second of all, he is getting way too worked up about some random girl smiling at him in a crowded place. It's actually pretty shallow of him to be so depressed over a girl who he's never even talked to. Sure, she may be beautiful, but she may also be stupid and annoying.
   
3. He has ugly feet. I don't like his voice.
   
4. This is a weird video, and not weird in a good way. Why does he line his stuff up all nice like that? Why does he jump into the water? Why is he in Antarctica? Why does he take his clothes off, but not his pants? Besides, aren't his clothes already wet anyway? So why does he even bother taking them off at all?
   
5. Girls like him anyway.