Apologies for not posting sooner. Turns out China restricts access to Livejournal, and I’m only able to access it after going through a proxy server.

There’s so much to say with so little time. If you’re looking for pictures, look to my Facebook albums. Right now it’s only clubbing because that’s what we’ve primarily been doing for the past 7 days, but at the same time let me tell you that school is rigerous: Four hours of language every day and 2 hours of business classes every TWF. I’m supposed to learn a year’s worth of Chinese language in two months. Insane? I’d wager.

Shanghai itself is massive, very overwhelming and challenging to navigate. Barely anyone speaks English, and I’ve been forced to put my Chinese language learning on hyper drive. It’s working but pretty frustrating because everyone just assumes that I am Chinese and am supposed to understand everything that they’re trying to tell me. I’ve been cut no slack.

These seven days have been one unfortunate event after another for me. First my Calvin Klein bag was stolen with my camera. Don’t assume I was overly careless and waving my bag in everyone’s face to take; rather, the theives were slick and managed to take it without me noticing from right under my nose. The trick to safety is paranoia, and that is going to dictate my behavior in Shanghai for the coming months. Aside from this event, I got food poisoning, an ulcer on my gums, been bitten by ten thousand mosquitoes (which resulted in me having the skin of a leper), and wasted way too much money on clubbing and on non-essentials. I have just assumed that I am prone to physical misfortune throughout this trip, so I might as well suck it up and deal with it.

However, one bright side remains to be said, yet I fear in doing so will negate that goodness. I’ve become very superstitious in the past few years. It’s probably because of my desire to be in control of my own actions. Either way, I just wanted to point out that YES some goodness has come out from being here and is helping me get through each and every day. I pray not to lose it through all these jinxes.

In the end, don’t look for too many postings from me through Livejournal as it was challenging enough just getting on this thing to post this entry. I’ll get back in the swing of things once I’ve hit Thailand on Sept. 2.

GO CHECK OUT MY PICTURES OF FACEBOOK!

I thought this quarter was extremely sucky.
How did I manage to slack and not commit as much to my work?
But then I checked my grades out this morning, and I’m seriosuly in shock!

I S 300: INTRO TO INFO SYS – 3.4
MKTG 490: BRAND MGMT – 3.7
SIS 201: MAKING OF 21ST CENT – 3.6
SPHSC 100: VOICE&ARTIC IMPROV – 3.8

I’m sooo happy haha. In IS, I ended up getting the lowest grade in class for one of the labs. And yeah, I’m a bit disappointed that my grade isn’t higher, but I am still happy with this score because the class was pretty fun to just sit and listen in.

For the amount of work I put into brand mgmt., this grade is way too over the top. Haha. I learned a lot though. We just didn’t put as much effort into the projects and reports as we should have.

I was seriously prepared to receive below a 3.0 for this class. My TA has consistently graded me down on the dumbest things, and this course is designed to be the weed out class for international studies majors. However, it turns out that I conquered it! My final paper was waay below average too, but I suppose I killed the final exam. Nice. I’m excited.

I don’t care about this class, but I DID learn a lot from it. Now I can go up to someone and better imitate their accents and notice how their breathing patterns are inefficient. Haha. Is this a useful skill to have? Maybe in learning new languages – which I greatly enjoy. I would have been upset if I got anything below a 3.8.

Overall, this quarter…this quarter…that’s all I can say. I’m glad it’s over and I survived with good results. I ended up making the dean’s list again after all. School starts again next week but this time on a different continent and in a different language. Let’s see how I can get through intensive Chinese language and business courses. (I leave Friday. Au revoir)

This sucks, I have good reception for my wireless in the living room but not in my bedroom. And I drained the bandwidth from my other network so my ‘Korean drama streaming video constantly’ watching arse got banned.

By the way, I leave for China this Friday. I feel like I should be more excited.

Dammit, I picked the worst week to start my typhoid pill…

Graduations are sad.

I’ve just finished moving for the most part.
Now I’m living in a one-bedroom apartment, in a historic motel complex.
The place is admittedly a little run-down, but I’m covering that well w/ furnishings.
The shower is archaic and it took me 15 minutes to figure out.
There is so much space, I don’t know what to do with it.

Maybe it’s too much space. Is living alone the right choice? I have to admit that it’s slightly lonely, but I hope I’ve made the decision to live happier and more independent. Place still needs more stuff before I can take pictures, but after school is out I’ll be doing that soon due to lack of things to do.