Hey there

Hey everyone. It's Friday night and I'm probably not going to do anything exciting. This time I have a good reason though, I swear!

Anyways, here's what I've been up to over the past two weeks:

SPEECH CONTEST:

The Sunday before last was the preliminary round for the speech contest. I came on low sleep and while running late but despite that I ended up qualifying for the final round.

I worked really hard for the final round and told a lot of my friends to come and cheer me on (the speech was at 9:00 in the morning so I told a lot of people in hopes that two or three would come). Surprisingly, eleven people total came to cheer me on. I think I did very well on my speech, despite not winning the giant cash prize. The two people who got first and second had fantastic Mandarin and the third place prize wasn't really "third place" per se; there were three separate categories and since my speech was pretty middle-of-the-road I didn't win any of those. No big; I think overall it was a good experience and was a help to my Chinese.

TUTORING JOB:

I think the phrase "too good to be true" applies here: After going to my third time tutoring, the mother of the kid I'm tutoring said that they'd like to reschedule the time since the kid is "really tired after school". She said she'd give me a call soon to reschedule the time. I still haven't received that call. I think that was pretty much a polite firing. To this I say, whatever. Sure, the lady has questionable tactics but I don't think it'll be easy for her to find a tutor who can bring to the table what I can bring.

Well, since all that's wrapped up, I've been looking to other things to keep myself busy. I've been focusing extra attention on my school work and recently got a membership to the Shida gym, so I can lift weights there after class.

I also have some trips coming up in the near future. Tomorrow I was planning on going to Xinzhu (Hsinchu or 新竹) with May and some of her friends, but that got kiboshed because of weather. (I was staying in because I had to get up early for that. Darn!) That has been rescheduled for a later date. Chinese New Year is coming up, and while I'm not leaving the country, I'm planning on going to Sun Moon Lake near the tail end of it and I might be going to Zhunan (May's hometown) somewhere in there too. At the end of February my friend Kyle wants to go to Green Island to SCUBA dive and I just may tag along. And in late April or early May I'll have a friend from home coming and we'll be hopping around the island.

So, that's what's going on. Class and kickboxing are going very well, too. Thanks for checking in.