Daily routine

08:00 Get up, eat breakfast of fruit and 面包 (bread)
09:30 Catch the 311 bus on the main drag by our apartment
10:00 Arrive at the language center on campus, study, review yesterday's lesson/preview today's lesson
12:00 Class begins
15:00 Class ends, go to late lunch/early dinner with classmates
16:30 Catch the 311 bus back home
17:15 Arrive back at the apartment, study
20:00 Shower, go to bed

Monday through Friday, that's pretty much what I do. It's a bit surprising how much studying I'm doing, to be honest. I think my case is a bit unusual, though, in that our teacher is really strict with characters and such, so you can't cut even the smallest corner. It's good, it means my Chinese is going to eventually get better, but I think there's definitely a period where you kind of lose a bit of confidence and have to adjust to being constantly corrected.

Grading is done a bit differently here. 70 is considered passing. That's pretty high, especially compared to the States. But 90 is considered stellar, which is low compared to the States. Anything in the 80s is considered very good. Talk about an adjustment. I nearly had a heart attack when my first exam came back with an 87, but then my Japanese classmate told me that 87 was really good and that anything over 85 was considered a really solid score. So I felt a bit better after that. I still felt pretty bad when I scored an 82 on the second exam, and I really busted my butt for the exam that we took today. I'm kind of hoping for something in the extreme high 80s, or even a 90, if for no other reason than to boost my self-confidence a bit.

Have to run over to the post office tomorrow. Unfortunately, because the post office near the apartment is small, they don't receive packages, so I have to go all the way over to the main post office near the MRT station to pick up the package. Last time, the delivery guy just left the package on top of the mailbox, but my neighbor told me that technically, they're not supposed to do that, and maybe the delivery guy just did it because I was a foreigner and he thought it wouldn't matter. In any event, it's not that big of a deal, I can get over there for free on the city shuttle, and just walk back. It's about a twenty minute walk, and if I go in the morning, it shouldn't be too hot.

I'm also going over to campus tomorrow afternoon to participate in a linguistics experiment that an NTU student is doing. She needs native English speakers, and I guess she needs more females. Lauren saw an advertisement in the language center for it and told me about it, and the nice thing is, in addition to helping this student out, I also get a NT500 compensation, so that's kind of nice. Bit of spending money.

Our scholarship is supposed to be arriving on the 30th, although it doesn't sound at all for sure. I've been in to the office several times asking about it, and I think the woman there is getting kind of sick of me, but the fact of the matter is, the 30th is really, really late to be receiving the money for September. I really, really hope that the money for October comes much earlier. Living here can be cheap, but it's not quite as cheap as China, and it's quite easy to spend a lot of money here. In China, it was almost impossible to spend too much money, things were so cheap there. Here, it's more of an effort.

Saw a cockroach in the kitchen a few nights ago. Not a particularly fun experience, the thing scared the living daylights out of me because he kind of popped up out of nowhere. Not huge, but not small either. I let him live because he was just in the kitchen and not in my bedroom. I haven't seen any bugs in my bedroom, but if I do, it's game over for them. Kitchen, living room, that's all fair, but my bedroom is off limits.

I got hit with this unbelievable wave of nostalgia a few dyas ago as well. Sitting in the study lounge at the language center, reviewing for my exam, listening to Jimmy Eat World, I had this sudden flashback to sitting in the library at Oxy, studying on a Saturday morning. It was amazing how vivid the memory was too, I could almost smell the coffee I had bought at the Marketplace, and I could almost see the books open in front of me. I guess it's just kind of unbelievable to me how fast life is moving, how that was less than six months ago, that memory, and yet it feels like a world apart. That was my reality for four years, that was my world, and now, Taipei is my world, my reality. I guess I don't know how to explain it, it's just kind of stunning and overwhelming to think about.