Monday Update

Today I woke up late again but at least I'm getting better...I was only 10 min late to class this morning.

In class today, we discussed the possibilities of reunification of Taiwan and the mainland (tong yi). The teacher also asked the guy from Pusan, S. Korea about his views on reunification of Korea and he said that most S. Koreans are for it. He said recently S. Koreans were allowed to visit their relatives in N. Korea (bei chao xian) for the first time but only on the border. The Taiwan Guomindang gov't allowed Taiwanese to visit relatives in the mainland (tan qin) in 1987. The teacher also asked about our views on standardization of the Chinese language and terms since many terms used in the mainland differ from that used in Taiwan (i.e., fan che vs. xi hong si (tomatoes), ji cheng che vs. chu zhu che or da di (taxi), jing cha vs. gong an (police), guo yu vs. han yu or pu tong hua (Mandarin Chinese), xiao fan vs. ge ti hu (private enterprise), lou vs. ceng (floor), jia da che vs. zi xing che (bike), bing bang vs. bing gun (popsicle), etc. etc....we have to write short essay on tomorrow's test on this very topic).

So after class all of the classmates excluding Yong Am went out to eat, plus a Taiwanese girl from Taida, who Jimmy met through a language exchange ad on Tealit (haven't looked on that site yet). We went to this Korean bbq place where you cook your own meat. It was pretty good but not nearly as good as in ATL nor NYC.

Then I went home and SLEPT..I set the alarm but I just kept sleeping until finally around 5 PM I made myself read the short essay, which we'll be tested over tomorrow in one section of the chapter test. (I should be studying now since I haven't even reviewed the lesson vocab nor the supplementary material-comparing terms used in mainland China vs. terms used in Taiwan-but I'm procrastinating). Then after getting stuck (I couldn't read some of the characters bc it's not typed but purposely written messily since that's how it will be in real life) I was about to take a nap again but I got a text from Conor. So I met up w/ him, and 2 Japanese girls, one of them was Nico who dropped out of my class, and the other was a kawai girl named Ella (from Tokyo-her Chinese was remarkably good and her English wasn't bad either). We went to "Jamaican Coffee" and ate for about 2 hrs bc Nico is so slow and bc we were chatting. So I chatted right through Judo class-oh well. So I jokingly said that I think any place outside the US is the third world..and then the topic of a/c came up and I said that I find it strange that most Europeans don't have A/C and Conor said that he hates A/C, that it irritates his eyes....I've noticed that the French girl also dislikes A/C and blinks a lot and rubs her eyes in class and then tells the teacher to turn off the A/C or fan...really strange. As an American I cannot live w/o A/C...haha I said Americans are really fragile ppl we can't live comfortably w/o certain luxuries/amenities. I also learned how to say 'mistress' in Chinese bc Conor called Nico a K-1 mistress (long story...had to do w/ our lifelong dreams...). It's qing2 fu4 (情婦）I know the characters bc Conor has a really cool phone that has a dictionary w/ Chinese characters and the English definition. I can switch b/n English & Chinese when texting too but I'm not sure how to do it...

Then I went to lift weights and it was a good workout cuz I'm nearly back to the weight I benched in the US (I dropped a lot coming here bc i'm unmotivated or something w/o my regular lifting friends). Today I benched 200 lbs.

I think tomorrow I'm going to finally contact my unpaid internship and also contact the lady to teach her son English...I need to stop being a bum and sleeping through my days.

I heard this song at the Korean BBQ place today:

(it's from the classic K drama-"Full House")

OK I better start studying the vocab now.