Brain Lapse

Again with the two-days thing. Today was actually worse--Wednesdays in general are going to be rough, really. My brain is fried.

My day today began with Morning English at Hanmin at 8am, meaning I had to be out the door here by no later than 7:15 or so. After that I had (and always will have) an hour break (in which I get coffee; this morning Maggie and I went out and brought back some for Alison, too), and then taught from 9:30-noon. Then, after eating lunch, I lesson planned with Alison and Maggie, then set out for Sanmin for our biweekly Fulbright meeting, which began at 2pm. It was interesting at times, but the general mood of teachers (LETs and ETAs alike) was exhaustion. When that finished (10 minutes late), the ETAs had a chat with Alex and Fonda, then had about a half hour to go grab a snack (奶茶--milk tea--and 7-11 garlic bread for me) before Chinese classes started at 5:10. Then we had class for 2 hours. When I got home, around 7:45 (after a brief detour to Chialing's with Emily and Lydia, where we were disappointed to find her closing up already), I took the opportunity to run some errands: pick up flashcards from the stationary store (more on that later), buy pineapple and nectarines from a fruit stand (dinner), and pick up some milk.

So around 8:30, just over 13 hours after I left the house, I sat down to a nice relaxing evening of painstakingly copying foreign characters and building a stack of unknown words the height of Taipei 101.

Why, you may ask?

Well, the title refers to more than just my present inability to think straight, or my inability to remember the first part of my day--on the drive from Hanmin to Sanmin I decided I was going to write my scooter rant today--traffic inspired me--but that rant is lost now--though that does of course play a part.

But it also refers to Chinese class. Maybe it was a function of the long day, but today in class I was absolutely worthless in anything related to Chinese. Usually pronunciation can be my saving grace, even when my memory fails (often), but tonight, I couldn't even get that right. When we met up with Chialing, she asked me what we learned today, and I couldn't remember a single thing to tell her. The word "zai" (4th tone--在/ 再) popped into my head--it means either "located" or "then," depending on context/character--but that was it. One word, from an entire lesson which included pretty much everything about how to ask for/give directions.

Crap.

The kicker was that I had spent all of my breaks at school today studying--going over old vocabulary, studying the dialogues we would be doing tonight--all for nothing. This may seem like the most self-evident statement in the history of the world, but Chinese is hard!

Also, today while ordering 奶茶 with Karina today, she told me I've been saying "you" (有)  instead of "yao" (搖) when ordering recently--telling everyone that I have whatever I'm ordering, instead of saying that I want it. The one phrase I thought I had down. And the worst part is that I know the difference between those two words! Yet even this failed me today. 

So now I have a freakishly tall stack of cards with the Chinese character and a picture on one side, and the pinyin (phonetic Chinese) and English translation written on the back. I'll be staring hard at these puppies on a daily basis, and adding to them, too, which my writers' cramp-y hands are not looking forward to right now.

On a positive note, I received my official invitation to the 10/10 celebration in Taipei next month. It's kind of a big deal.

You can tell by the envelope. And, you know, the return address: "Ministry of Foreign Affairs."

So yeah, all the Fulbright scholars this year are invited to celebrate the Republic of China's 100th Anniversary, in the capital, with the president, as the guests of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The invitation states that "national dress or western style dress" is required (time to break out my silk from China!), and "guest pass is enclosed and required for entry."

Of course, ours didn't have the guest passes--Vivian, a Fulbright coordinator in Taipei took them for us so we don't forget them--but the prestige of the invitation still oozes forth. I am so excited, humbled, and blessed to be in Taiwan at such a great moment in its history!

If you were curious, here's the invitation itself.

Perhaps I should have mentioned at the beginning of this post that I don't have school tomorrow, thanks to Cing-Shan's students' 6th grade trip. This is, after all, the only reason I'm still up at 3am local time: no set time frame tomorrow. Which means that I will (try to remember to) hit up the gym and then shut myself up at Brunch Cafe to finish my application, which is due Friday, Seattle time.

So I guess I should go to bed now. Time to let my brain recover.