First week of classes down, on to week 2

So, last time I posted I said I was going to switch classes. Well, I did. It took some time (I didn't go to any classes on Thursday and on Friday I had to wait two hours before I could find a class with space in it), but I'm in a more challenging class. The class is third-year level.

Now, back in America I completed third year, but there are multiple reasons why I think I should take that level again in Taiwan. One is that there are many characters I need to learn. In Taiwan there are more complicated characters (since China simplified theirs in the 50's) and Taiwanese slang (for example, "drive the night car" means to stay up late and study, which thanks to my misunderstanding caused a few laughs in class). In addition there are some characters that have been covered in previous editions of the book series they use which I haven't studied yet.

Another reason is that the teacher's expectations are higher than what I had in America. My professor in America, Zhu laoshi, encouraged saying something in Chinese that made general grammatical sense more than saying exactly the correct thing. My new teacher (I'm not quite sure of her name yet) wants us to "use beautiful Chinese", which means we must strive to say things in the proper way it'd be written in a newspaper. On one hand, I like this; it will definitely make my Chinese much better. On the other hand, it's going to be a lot tougher. Tonight I spent four hours doing homework, as opposed to last week spending no more than two hours a night.

Despite these hardships, I say bring it on.

This weekend was on the tame side. After doing nothing Friday night, Saturday night I decided that I was sick of having to sit on my bed to use the computer and that I'd solve the problem. I stopped at the RT Mart and bought a desk and a folding chair. Totally it cost me less than $20 US. I assembled the desk and I'm typing on it now. Definitely a proud accomplishment for me.

I still haven't brought the wireless router into working condition. I never received an e-mail back from the router company, but I checked online and figured out the problem. One of the main problems is that there are some settings on Windows Vista that you can only change with an Administrator account, which is only available if you turn off User Account Control and type a long command into the command prompt. Rather annoying, if you ask me. However, I've been able to log on to the router and set up a wireless network and wireless security. However, I'm unable to connect the router to the Internet. The Internet runs on a PPPoE connection and when I type in the login name and password and try to connect, the connection fails. (I'm only saying this in case some tech-savvy friend of mine knows how to fix my problem.) I'm going to try to call the Internet company sometime this week and see what they say; if nothing good comes of it, I'll just have to return it.

Tonight I went all out on dinner. I had chicken burgers, but with lettuce, tomato, cheese, pickles, sautéed onions and mushrooms, and Heinz ketchup. I also baked some French fries. I think I should do fine if I ever crave American food.

Tomorrow morning I have class at 10:20. I'm thinking about waking up around 8-ish, showering and breaking fast, and heading over to class so that I'm 20 minutes early or so, so I can prepare properly. Goodnight, y'all.