Things have improved a lot since my last post. Part of it came from realizing that I sometimes harbor a not-too-positive attitude towards my studies, particularly in regards to my language skills, not to mention being too hard on myself in general. There will always be areas where I could improve, but there's a time and place for everything...
On a positive note, some accomplishments from the past few months:
1. I passed Level 4 (out of 6) Listening and Level 3 (also out of 6) for the TOCFL (Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language test) this month! This to me is a pretty satisfying accomplishment considering that I didn't really have time to study for it and we're only expected to pass Level 3 based on our current class level.
2. I finished my second 10K race in Taiwan! I wish I had trained more, but it was an accomplishment just to get up at 4 in the morning to head to the race site. I don't know why, but Taiwanese like running their races *very* early in the morning.
3. I entered a school essay contest and my submission won a prize! All winning submissions will be published in a collection of essays this month, and I'm excited to see the result. The topic was "NCCU and Me." I'm still waiting to hear back from another essay contest I entered. Good thing the contest guidelines only require essays to be written in English, which is still my strong point...
4. I realized that I can successfully hold conversations in Chinese now with native Taiwanese. Over the past 2 weeks I had a conversation with a taxi driver, a random guy riding a motorcycle, and a surfer only using Mandarin. Most Taiwanese people I talk to also comment on the fact that I speak pretty well considering that I've been in Taiwan less than a year. At first I thought they were just being polite, but then I thought, hey if I can successfully communicate with them without using English, I must be doing something right.
5. My writing has improved too. My teacher says I do pretty well on our writing assignments, and there was one time where I wrote two short essays with no mistakes. This is pretty amazing considering that characters are my weakness, and for me at least, it's so easy to get them mixed up (if you even miss one stroke, it often becomes another character altogether). Not to mention learning traditional characters is no piece of cake.
6. I've gotten closer to a couple of people I didn't know too well before...when I'm with them, I can laugh a lot and learn about different cultures (the majority of them are not from Western countries). We talk about differences between American culture and Asian cultures a lot. The cool thing about studying in an international environment is that you can meet people from all over the world...I think my current class also represents a good mix of nationalities. At first I was a little worried about the fact that there are 3 Americans in class, including me, but we're all from different areas so I can learn a bit about those places too.
