It's getting to the point now when I start "blogging" that I start to wonder: "Did I already tell this story?" Not the same story maybe, but the same type of story, like one time I wrote an entire blog entry about going to buy a garbage bag. I'm sure I've done it. It's all part of my prematurely getting old, I'm 32 now you know, and I don't know how much longer I've got!

I try to keep my blog entries positive, but sometimes I have bad days. Today I had a bad day. I was over an hour late to school, the rest of the students had already taken most of a test, we had a test today. I hate to sound dramatic or like I'm feeling sorry for myself, but the second half of the test I wrote nothing down. There were 10 questions, multiple choice, the teacher would say a sentence 2 or 3 times and then we'd choose the best summary from the test paper. My listening comprehension was, or is, not up with the rest of the class.

Needless to say by the time I turned in my mostly blank test paper I was pretty depressed. The rest of the class period we spent learning new vocabulary words, but I was thinking about what I was going to do instead of paying attention. I may ask if I can be moved back into the second quarter class, which would put me back 3 months but I'd basically be able to review everything which might help my Chinese a lot. Or I could switch to a private class. The advantage to that would be that I could move at my own pace and also I could get the teacher to not talk while I was taking notes or reading an explanation from the book, I can't listen and write and the same time. That would cost a lot more money though, and I'm not certain it would help anyway. The other option is to continue the class, since the test doesn't actually effect anything other than my pride, it's not a graded class. This way I'd increase in understanding of Chinese grammar and words and those things, concepts, but I'd have to actually learn to use it later. So for the next year (or several) I'd be reading something and I'd say "Oh yeah, now I get it." Or more likely I'd think it was new to me, but hopefully it would stick in my soft little brain a little better the second time through.

Either way, despite the little lump in my stomach after today's disappointment, I have not given up. I do not surrender. After-all I did not come here to be a whiz at learning Chinese, I came to learn Chinese, and that is indeed what is happening, it's just happening slowly.

But the day wasn't all I-guess-I'm-kinda-slow-but-I'm-sticking-with-it-anyway experiences and self pep-talks. My buddy Khyree has returned from a month back in the states. We hung out for a bit then met Jake, his room-mate, and ate Tapenyaki, then watched "10,000 B.C." Which was a movie about prophecy being fulfilled during an evolutionary leap in mankind's history. I thought it was a funny contrast. We laughed at it afterward.