Language Exchange

It has been a long week, and tomorrow classes begin again. At first I didn't really mind waking up at 6:30 Mondays-Fridays, but towards the end of the week I got rather tired. We have a quiz every day - sometimes it's vocabulary-driven and other times oral - and tomorrow we have our first test. Unlike the classes I took at UCLA, my teacher makes us write down the traditional characters as well as the pinyin (with the correct tone marks). I'm really bad at remembering the tones...it's like that extra annoying step that makes my brain feel too full.

Obviously my Korean and Japanese classmates have a huge advantage when it comes to writing (having written many of the characters in their own languages), even though they still have to memorize the meanings and pronunciation just like the rest of us. But there's clearly a divide between those of us who can read/write well and those of us who can't. (Guess which camp I belong to.) My reading is definitely improving much faster than my writing. I'm even starting to recognize most of the characters I learned before. But writing them is a different story. I'm trying to be more disciplined and not try to cram everything like I did in college, but it's a tough habit to break and so far I'm still struggling with it.

On the bright side, I had my first language exchange last week! One of my classmates, whom I'll call A-chan, is teaching me Japanese and I'm teaching her English. Her major is international communications geared towards advertising so she wants to practice business as well as conversational English. Her English is much better than my Japanese, but oh well. I'm trying. You might be wondering why I'm not doing exchange in Chinese, the language I came here to learn. I'm planning to do future exchanges in Mandarin as well, but I figure since I'm using this part of my brain anyway, why not maximize its potential? Not going to lie though, I do sometimes mix up Japanese and Chinese in my head and out loud.

I made a posting for the exchange board at school, but then one of my friends told me that his friend wants an exchange partner for English and in return she can help me with Chinese. So I have two potential exchange partners lined up already. I'm not sure if I should do more than 3 exchanges a week...that seems like a bit too much.

I also went running the other day at the track at school and was sore for hours afterwards. I wanted to start slow so I only ran a little under 2 miles. At first things were fine, but then I started getting stitches in my side and had to stop, walk, run, and repeat. I have a little less than two months to prepare for a race I'm running at the end of October (10K - should be doable, I hope). Running long distances is a lot like learning a language; if you don't do it frequently, you start to suck really quickly. (And it's so hard to build up to the point where you feel comfortable doing it.) My i-phone charger broke so I can't even listen to music while I run, it's really sad. My dad said he'd mail me a new one soon, but it'll probably take at least a week to arrive (I buy them online since buying them from the apple store costs way too much.)

Well, time to do a little studying and then go to sleep. Back to the grind tomorrow!

I found out that UCLA and NCCU actually have an exchange agreement! Meaning that there are probably some other UCLA students studying here.

I really liked the picture of the running man above the sitting man at the track.

The exchange board at school, where anyone can post an ad looking for a language partner.

I made this ad before my friend suggested an exchange partner. It kind of felt like writing an online dating profile for some reason (though I've never done it, so I can only imagine this is what it's like).