Yet again, I'm doing things in a roundabout way. Or at least, planning to do things. At several points over my life I have gotten the notion that I ought to start learning some Chinese characters so I can at least read the signs if I somehow get shanghai'd (Ha! Get it?) and am stranded in China. Well at least if somehow I ended up in Shanghai, I'd be okay because I can sort of speak the dialect...But anywhere else, it'd be hopeless.)

I do remember that back when I was about 6 or 7 years old, I went to a sort of day care place (it was called Little Genius Learning Center, if I remember correctly. Pretty arrogant-sounding name, if you ask me), and there was a nice lady who would go over a beginner's Chinese book with me. She'd point to a line and I was supposed to recite it to her, and at the end of the day she'd give me an apple as a present. Actually, I didn't really know what the words said, I'd just memorize what she'd said when she read it earlier, and then I'd just repeat what I remembered. But it sure looked like I was learning Chinese. Now that I think of it, I was good at fooling people when I was a kid. My grandma made me take a nap every afternoon, so if I didn't fall asleep I'd just fake it when she came in to check on me. Eventually, when enough time had passed, I would get up and she'd give me some ice cream. So actually I never got anything near as much sleep as my parents thought I had, especially in preschool, when I never slept during naptime. (But then again, they know that I'm an insomniac, because when I was a baby it took a really, really long time for me to fall asleep. It's still pretty bad now.)

Now that I'm interested in learning Japanese now, though, I'm starting to regret the fact that I never went to Chinese school or at least made my parents teach me. In fact, I was just the opposite for most of my life - I was adamant that I'd focus on English. I really believed that if I tried to learn Chinese, I'd forget English, because I actually learned to speak Chinese before I learned to speak English. Soon as I went to school and was forced to learn English, though, I pretty much forgot all the Chinese I'd learned and now I almost always speak English at home. And on another note, I actually look a weird, irrational pride in the fact that I was Chinese but did not learn my own language. I guess that was an early sign that I would later try to go against the tide in most aspects of my life, if only just to be different from "everyone else", whom I would refer to with slight contempt. I used to want to just blend into the background, but now I kind of think that fitting in means being boring. (That's not necessarily true, though; I probably just don't get to know people well enough to make an accurate judgment.)

Well, although I tried to memorize Katakana and Hiragana with the help of Quizlet, I am still a very long way from reading Japanese because I don't know enough kanji. Guess what kanji is? Yup, it's Chinese characters. The one thing I insisted on not learning turns out to be really important. So I have to start from scratch now if I ever hope to learn Japanese. I was actually planning to work on that this summer, but now that I have the homework from my classes to do...Well, I let myself get too stressed again and now I'm really not in the mood for the things I was doing earlier this summer. Looks like it's going to be a wasted summer and I'll probably be cursing myself for the rest of high school because I won't get to relax again.

Still, I probably should talk to my parents about it sometime. I know that they're going to be busy, what with work, remodeling, and health problems on both sides of the family (grandma on mother's side had back issues and had to go the hospital; dad and his mother were both very ill not long ago. And I should not neglect to mention that my mom is still limping around, although her toe is recovering considerably). But I guess if I'm going to learn a new language, starting late's better than never. I've gotta get crackin'.

Labels: china, chinese, dialect, different, english, family, foreign language, health, japanese, kanji, languages, late, mandarin, nap, pretend, problems, quizlet, sleep

Earlier this month, there were flag football tournaments going on at lunchtime. Some of the students had been participating at the games. Apparently one of the PE teachers made the students stay late to clean up after the games (at least, they claim that, I wasn't there).

Well, I was sitting in my math classroom and the bell rang. A few students ended up being late. The first said, "Flag football," the second said the same, and so on...Until there was only one person left to come to class. As he was approaching the classroom, our teacher said, "Let's see what his excuse is."

To our surprise, when the boy came in, he said, quite simply, "I was late." My teacher was impressed by this, saying that the boy had taken responsibility instead of shifting the blame to the flag football games and PE teacher.

And then, during another math class, we were reading out the answers. It's usually like this: The first person in a row reads an answer from their homework, and then the person behind them reads the next answer, and so on. Well, it got to one boy and he couldn't read the answer because he didn't have his homework. "Do you have your homework?" asked the teacher. The boy fumbled for a response, but finally he had to say no.

My dad asked me later on if students ever claim that their dog ate their homework when they don't have it. I guess it's not really an excuse that's used nowadays. I mean, it wouldn't be a credible excuse unless someone had a dog in the first place.

Well, anyhow, I was reading a book called When Heaven Fell by Carolyn Marsden. It's about a girl living in Vietnam, named Binh. Her aunt moved to America when she was very young because it was rough in Vietnam at the time. Now that she is 35, she has rediscovered her family and traveled to Vietnam to visit them. But there's a lot of culture shock on both sides. The relatives living in Vietnam expect Di Thao, the aunt who lives in America, to be rich because she is American. And Di Thao has trouble getting used to the lifestyle in Vietnam.

For one thing, a relative asked Di Thao what her age was. Di Thao had said that in America, women didn't reveal their ages, before finally saying she was 35. Binh didn't understand why her aunt was uncomfortable because apparently, it's important to know someone's age so you know how to address them in Vietnamese.

And then the relatives asked Di Thao what she did for a living. She said she was a teacher. "What do you teach? Mathematics? Economics?" asked the relatives. Di Thao replied that she taught art. The relatives were confused about this. "People go to school to learn art? Why?"

The relatives also thought it was shocking that Di Thao was 35 but had no husband or children. As for Di Thao, she was surprised by the toilet, which you have to squat to use (Bleh! Horrible! I saw those kinds of toilets in China. I wouldn't go to the bathroom when there weren't the kinds of toilets that you can sit on).

I've been thinking that I really am very used to the American lifestyle myself. I love spaghetti (but when Binh ate it, she thought it was strange, especially the cheese taste). Our house isn't big, but it isn't so small that we all sleep side by side on the floor. (I think houses are pretty big in the USA compared to other countries. In Europe, things are more petite too) And we are accustomed to not wearing uniforms to school. When Binh saw a photo of an American school, and saw that the students wore plain clothing, she wondered if they were too poor to afford uniforms...In the USA it's usually just the private school kids who wear uniforms. I would like to be able to live in another country - not just visit it - because simply seeing a place for a week or two is not enough to really get a feel for what life is like there.

Labels: america, book, class, culture, different, dog, excuse, flag football, geometry, late, lunch, math, scapegoat, school, shock, sports, teacher, uniform, vietnam, when heaven fell

There's this song that goes something like "I left my heart in San Francisco" (which I guess I can understand, because I think San Francisco is a nice city, despite apparently having a history of being notorious place). And I thought it was suitable considering what I was thinking about earlier.

The common belief is that being homesick will make a vacation miserable for a person. But I don't think that's necessarily the case. It's true, during the first one or two days of Yosemite, I was trying hard not to burst into desperate sobs, because I was unaccustomed to the rush of Yosemite, the horrible-smelling bathtubs, the thin walls of the tent (meaning that you could hear any loud noise being made elsewhere), and the lack of sympathy from much of the other people (judging from their excited attitudes, since I try to avoid pouring out my heart and soul to people I do not know well).

As is the unusual case here, after a few days, I realized that I would be going home soon, and with this thought in my mind, I acquired a much more positive attitude toward the Yosemite trip. Isn't it funny how wanting to go home can become your motivation? I kind of figured that if I had fun the time would pass faster and I could go home and sleep in my nice old bed and get to take a warm shower (the showers were so cold, it was warmer when you weren't showering than when you were showering...). And in this way I was able to enjoy the trip after all, despite being very paranoid for much of the time. I was very fearful during the hiking when we had to clamber up rocks (how precarious! One false move and you would fall all the way to the valley floor) and also when exploring caves (you could slip and break your bones or bang your head on the ceiling! Or you would at least end up with really dirty pants and gloves). But at the same time feeling the adrenaline rush was a good thing since it made me feel adventurous. For much of my life I had been craving something exciting. This is very contradictory considering that I'm a person that likes normality and regular comforting rhythms in their life.

Just the other night, I closed my eyes. I began to imagine that I was back in Yosemite again. I could imagine the covers on my bed turning into the top of the sleeping bag, and the quiet of the room turning into the annoying dripping and banging of the heater... For some reason this gave me a kind of comfort while also making me feel very nostalgic. I wonder if perhaps the reason why I keep waking up really early, like 7:00 am, when I don't need to get up until 7:45, is that my mind thinks, "Oh no! I am so late for the breakfast at Yosemite!" but that's not the case at all.

My parents said that maybe some other time, like in 2011, we could go to Yosemite again. I'd like to go back to Yosemite, but I feel like if I went back there, I wouldn't want to leave. I'd like my days to pass in a national park, the way some people spend a lot of time in Yellowstone, watching the wolves with their binoculars. I'd like to be somewhere where I can see the stars as clear as day and where the trees make the air delightfully fresh. And as dear as home is to me, that place is not here.

Labels: adrenaline, adventure, breakfast, danger, excitement, homesick, late, memories, morning, national park, nostalgia, shower, sleeping bag, song, sounds, surprise, trip, yellowstone, yosemite

On the school announcements on Friday, one of the announcers said that it was To Write Love on Her Arms Day. During that day, you could write the word love on the arms of your friends. I have heard of To Write Love on Her Arms, because I saw it on a banner someone made once, but I had no idea what it really was, I actually thought it was a song... -_-;; It isn't a song at all. In fact, it's an organization. One of my classmates said that the organization was started because there was a girl who was depressed, she probably had wanted to commit suicide or hurt herself, and to help her, people would try to show that she was loved and wanted in the world, and now it's really major.

Unfortunately, someone commented that a lot of people just thought it was fun to write on each others' arms and didn't understand the meaning of this. It's bad to write on people's arms in the first place. I was once told that every time pen ink touches your skin, you lose a very tiny part of your life (not even a full second). That could be an exaggeration, but it's probably still not good to have ink on your skin, it might seep inside you, and some chemicals could make you sick if you had too much ink, or whatever. But the idea of To Write Love on Her Arms is admirable, nevertheless.

Currently I am reading the book Little Men by Louse May Allcott. I remember having written a post about Little Women in the past. It was a lot of fun writing the blog post in a more fancy way of speaking. I wonder if I should attempt that again sometime, maybe with a different style of writing. (I won't write in caps lock or in different colors, or with chatspeak, or with overuse of punctuation, because that kind of thing just blinds people)

My mom and I are still struggling to make a decision about whether to have braces still. Well, we're probably going to be going to the orthodontist I visited for a consultation (the one who isn't my usual dentist - my usual dentist, however, is also trained in orthodontics) because there were folks who recommended him, except for my mom's friend, who said, "Oh, THAT old man?" when my mom mentioned his name (interesting reaction, is it not?). The main decision now is whether I should get these things called "expanders". The orthodontist suggested that I should have them in order to apparently make me look better, and also because he plans to have my teeth moved so that they will be leaning outward a bit - it might help the gaps in my teeth disappear, or give me an overbite, which apparently is considered good-looking. I like my teeth just the way they are, though. I feel like I won't be myself anymore if I have braces and expanders and change the shape of my jaws. I've never been particularly religious but I do think it was karma and things like that which caused us to have the kind of brains and personalities and bodies that we have, and you shouldn't mess with the larger powers at work! D:

Just the other day, I finally got Ouran High School Host Club Volume 13 from the library. I hadn't read the manga for a while because it takes time for the English translations to come to the USA, and even more time for the library to buy them. It's really annoying, as I don't like to read manga on the computer. You have to click to flip the page and plus you don't get to read the author's comments and stuff (sometimes manga-kas write something, like some personal info or questions from readers, on the side of the page or on the bottom of the page) since it's still in Japanese, the people who translate manga for online readers don't always translate the author's comments...

I'm mentioning this because I noticed something. It said near the back of the manga, where there's a drawing by the author and some notes thanking people who helped or family and things like that, it said it was signed September 2008. Do you see that?! The English version didn't come out for sale until November 2009! It took more than a year! Us folks in North America are getting everything late. ;_;

Labels: author's comments, expanders, ink, late, little men, love, orthodontist, ouran high school host club, skin, song, to write love on her arms, writing style

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