So tired

We have our midterm this Friday, which is worth 30% of our overall grade, so everyone's been showing up to class really tired. I think we all start talking really strangely in Chinese when we're tired, including me. Been studying every day...initially I thought Chinese grammar was pretty easy (especially compared to Japanese), but I'm not sure what happened in merely a month, it seems to be getting a lot harder already. I especially have trouble using 了, which has so many uses other than past tense...

I also attended the scholarship ceremony for all the Huayu recipients...which was held more than a month after most of us have already started classes, not sure why they decided to do it so much later. It was nice of them to put together the event though. The only question I had was why group us by nationality - I currently feel more uncomfortable sitting at a table filled with only Americans than I do at a table filled with various nationalities, such as the situation in my Chinese class. Not to mention, I was the only Asian-American, period; it seemed like 90% of the American scholarship recipients were white males. I think I was very tired that day, but I didn't find any of our conversations particularly stimulating. Perhaps I simply feel less American as time goes on...

I am sort of rambling because I'm tired. My sleep schedule got thrown off by the typhoon and I have a cold. I hope I can recover by this weekend. We have Thursday off, but we'll probably spend the whole day studying.