Author's note: I have had a WONDERFUL time in Taiwan; please check out my companion list to this one for proof of that. But I thought it fitting, since I'm leaving, to remind myself of why it's not all bad to be going home--so this was my way of doing that.
10. Having to check all movies etc to make sure they are in English
OK, so this was only actually an issue once, last week when Tiffiany, Rachel and I went to see Brave and left two Chinese-dubbed lines in. But it will be very nice when I won't have to scrutinize every film title and description to be sure it's in English. In general, having English-language media readily available again will be a wonderful thing.
9. Having to watch my vocabulary and speed when talking
I don't particularly mind doing this, and I've gotten quite used to adjusting my speech to the English level of those around me--my students, for instance--but it will be much easier when I can turn that part of my brain off and just talk.
8. Being dirty all the time
In the same category: having my clothes get dirty all the time; having my shoes get dirty all the time; having my apartment be dirty all the time. No amount of caution or cleaning can help you when it's in the air.
7. Cockroaches
*Shudder* 'Nuff said.
6. Scootering in the rain
I love scootering--when it's nice out. When it's not, well...just see the last post I wrote on the subject. Being the constant subject of showers of street water is not exactly my idea of a good time.
5. Not being able to find potatoes on any menu, ever
I love potatoes. When asked my favorite food, that is usually my answer. So, when the only variety you can ever find them in is french fried, and that rarely, I get a little sad. And then a lot sad. Really, Taiwan, you're missing out on an amazing food here!
4. Being surrounded by bad drivers on poorly designed streets
I've written before my conclusions of why scootering in Taiwan is so difficult. Several times, actually. What it boils down to is this: badly designed roads and people who don't pay attention to things like right-of-way or the traffic laws. I won't miss that. (And yes, I realize that in conjunction with what I said yesterday, this makes me a massive hypocrite. I don't care.)
3. Having bones and skin and fat make up the majority of every "meat" dish on any menu
In America, we like our meat as meat only: no skin (too much fat!), no bones (too much work!), no fat (see "no skin"). In Taiwan, they're much better about not wasting things (and/or have less of a market for our other uses for these materials, like hot dogs, perhaps?), and so a slab of "meat" is never a slab: it's a little crosscut of a bone, whichever bone they had handy; your job is to get the bits off it that you like and leave the rest. I will like having "meat" mean just "meat" again.
2. Being drenched in sweat within 5 minutes of walking outside
I'm from the Pacific Northwest. I don't particularly like sweating, and less still do I like having heat dictate how I dress and how I look--that is, never well. I get quite excited in Taiwan when I'm being picked up (in a car!!) to go somewhere inside (air-conditioning!!), and so can do things like put on makeup and do my hair without the knowledge that it will all be for naught the instant I put on my scooter helmet or walk the few blocks to wherever I'm going.
1. Not being able to communicate above a very basic level
I've written about this more times than I can count, and certainly more times than I'd like to cross-reference for you now: it is so terribly hard sometimes not to be able to talk to most of the people you come across.Your world becomes very small, excepting the Internet, consisting of the few friends you have that speak English and the few places where you know you can communicate in Chinese--some well-trusted restaurants, for instance, and a single bank. Going anywhere else or doing anything else requires a massive effort, and even when you make that effort, is often incredibly frustrating and may or may not end in success. One very small example is in the realm of small talk, which I wrote about before--I feel so rude not making small talk with people I come across! And yet, the terrible truth is that, at least at the moment, I have no choice in Taiwan. And I won't miss that.
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Monday, June 25, 2012
Murphy's Law
I woke up today with simple plans. Here's how things were supposed to go down: 1) Meet Karina to see The Hunger Games in the afternoon; 2) Come home and eat dinner; 3) Meet Mandy, Rachel and Tiffiany to see Brave. Too bad it was one of those days where nothing goes according to plan.
Here's how things actually played out.
1) I rolled over, turned off my alarm, and willed myself into a sitting position. It was time to get up. Wait, when was I supposed to be meeting Karina? How much time did I have to get stuff done before I actually had to go? I shot off a text and drifted almost back to sleep. My phone buzzed: Karina, saying she couldn't make it because she had too much stuff to do. Oh. Okay. Just the one movie today, then.
2) I had eaten at awkward times all day, so I didn't really feel the call to eat anything until about a quarter till 7. Feeling lazy, and a little Taiwanese, there was only one obvious choice for where to procure my delicious foodstuffs: 7-11. I meandered down, grabbed some frozen pasta and frozen pork buns and some watermelon milk--dinner of champions!--and headed back upstairs to prepare my dinner for eating, (read: nuke it). That accomplished, I was chatting with Rachel when my phone rang. I looked at the screen: Hal, my tutee. I looked at the clock: 7:05. Crap.
Yep, after a full four months or so of having a tutoring session every Sunday at 7pm, never missing a session and never being late, I had completely forgotten about our last session ever. And that, even with the fact that I'd prepared a little gift as a going-away present for Hal, a gift I'd thought about both earlier in the day and earlier the previous day, as I had made conflicting movie-going plans with Mandy and Tiffiany. Whoops. Hal was gracious as I arrived 15 minutes late, and was even willing to put up with my request that we cut the length of our session from an hour and a half to an hour, so I could leave in just enough time to make the movie with Mandy, Tiffiany, Rachel, and Chialing, whom Rachel'd invited. It would work.
3) Partway through my session with Hal, I got a text from Mandy saying that the wedding she'd been invited to (and which had, thankfully, already moved our movie time back from 6-something to 8-something, or my session with Hal would have been COMPLETELY derailed) had been delayed to the point where it hadn't even started yet, so she wouldn't be able to come. Sadface. After I finished up with Hal, I rushed home to find Rachel waiting for me downstairs, lest we miss the beginning of the movie, with the news that Chialing also wouldn't be able to come. Again, sadface.
So Rachel and I jetted off into the night and, after a few quick U-turns, found the movie theater we were looking for, retrieved our tickets from Tiffiany, and sat down in the correct theater right as the movie began. There was only one problem: the movie was in Chinese. Not just with Chinese subtitles, but dubbed in Chinese. And, call me crazy, but when I, as a native English speaker, go to see a movie set in Scotland, it just isn't the same without the Scottish accents. We left within three or four lines.
But we didn't go far--Rachel found an employee in the hall and asked her if they had Brave playing in English (it's really not uncommon here, I promise: most theaters I've seen have popular American movies like this offered in both languages, with Chinese subtitles under all of them). They didn't. BUT, she was quick to point out, we could exchange our tickets for another film playing just then--they had an English version of Men In Black 3 that began in just a few minutes. So we exchanged our tickets and took the elevator to the third floor. They told us it was on the fourth, but when we made it to the third and didn't immediately get off we were met with several employees frantically waving at us to get off here, from which I gather that if we had continued up in the elevator, rather than the stairs they pointed us to, we would have been victims to some sort of Tower-of-Terror-style horrors or something.
So, to recap: I began the day thinking I would have a leisurely time of watching two movies, including an animated one with Scottish accents, with five friends, with plenty of time between in which to do nothing, and I ended it having nearly missed a work appointment, and having watched, with two friends, one movie, including not a single fierce animated Scottish girl, but with no dearth of aliens and Will Smith. And, in the process, we all managed to make a little bit of a fool of ourselves in front of everyone. Hooray, Murphy's Law!
Here's how things actually played out.
1) I rolled over, turned off my alarm, and willed myself into a sitting position. It was time to get up. Wait, when was I supposed to be meeting Karina? How much time did I have to get stuff done before I actually had to go? I shot off a text and drifted almost back to sleep. My phone buzzed: Karina, saying she couldn't make it because she had too much stuff to do. Oh. Okay. Just the one movie today, then.
2) I had eaten at awkward times all day, so I didn't really feel the call to eat anything until about a quarter till 7. Feeling lazy, and a little Taiwanese, there was only one obvious choice for where to procure my delicious foodstuffs: 7-11. I meandered down, grabbed some frozen pasta and frozen pork buns and some watermelon milk--dinner of champions!--and headed back upstairs to prepare my dinner for eating, (read: nuke it). That accomplished, I was chatting with Rachel when my phone rang. I looked at the screen: Hal, my tutee. I looked at the clock: 7:05. Crap.
Yep, after a full four months or so of having a tutoring session every Sunday at 7pm, never missing a session and never being late, I had completely forgotten about our last session ever. And that, even with the fact that I'd prepared a little gift as a going-away present for Hal, a gift I'd thought about both earlier in the day and earlier the previous day, as I had made conflicting movie-going plans with Mandy and Tiffiany. Whoops. Hal was gracious as I arrived 15 minutes late, and was even willing to put up with my request that we cut the length of our session from an hour and a half to an hour, so I could leave in just enough time to make the movie with Mandy, Tiffiany, Rachel, and Chialing, whom Rachel'd invited. It would work.
3) Partway through my session with Hal, I got a text from Mandy saying that the wedding she'd been invited to (and which had, thankfully, already moved our movie time back from 6-something to 8-something, or my session with Hal would have been COMPLETELY derailed) had been delayed to the point where it hadn't even started yet, so she wouldn't be able to come. Sadface. After I finished up with Hal, I rushed home to find Rachel waiting for me downstairs, lest we miss the beginning of the movie, with the news that Chialing also wouldn't be able to come. Again, sadface.
So Rachel and I jetted off into the night and, after a few quick U-turns, found the movie theater we were looking for, retrieved our tickets from Tiffiany, and sat down in the correct theater right as the movie began. There was only one problem: the movie was in Chinese. Not just with Chinese subtitles, but dubbed in Chinese. And, call me crazy, but when I, as a native English speaker, go to see a movie set in Scotland, it just isn't the same without the Scottish accents. We left within three or four lines.
But we didn't go far--Rachel found an employee in the hall and asked her if they had Brave playing in English (it's really not uncommon here, I promise: most theaters I've seen have popular American movies like this offered in both languages, with Chinese subtitles under all of them). They didn't. BUT, she was quick to point out, we could exchange our tickets for another film playing just then--they had an English version of Men In Black 3 that began in just a few minutes. So we exchanged our tickets and took the elevator to the third floor. They told us it was on the fourth, but when we made it to the third and didn't immediately get off we were met with several employees frantically waving at us to get off here, from which I gather that if we had continued up in the elevator, rather than the stairs they pointed us to, we would have been victims to some sort of Tower-of-Terror-style horrors or something.
 |
| We went to see this... |
| And somehow got this instead. |
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Life
Wow, it does NOT feel like 3am. And that is a VERY bad thing for my sleep cycles. But, also, a not-so-bad thing for my blog.
I had a pretty decent day, all considered. Watched most of a Scottish miniseries starring David Tennant--which, obviously, made me want to throw all my stuff in a bag and MOVE THERE NOW, though I resisted. FINALLY turned in my application for what I might do come September--and then accidentally half-way applied to a job in New York, which was odd. And grotesquely ironic: this job was posted on the website for a major publisher, and was one of FOUR fantastic jobs now posted on that site for which I may actually be qualified. Of course, I found them directly after mentally committing to another program. Sigh. Now to determine whether I should apply to them anyway...probably?
But the highlight of my day was easily my dinner plans. I met up with Tiffiany and our Chinese teacher, Mandy, at a great little Western-style restaurant on the Love River called Sandwich Island (and, stupid person that I am, I completely spaced that the dragon boat races going on would mean parking would be impossible--so I was 15 minutes late). The food was scrumptious, of course (fried chicken sandwich--mmm), and Mandy was so sweet--she brought Tiffiany and I some fantastic going away presents! Cue the part where I wish I'd brought more gifts to give away...
So we had our little meal, and then strolled along the Love River with the hordes of other people, watching dragon boat-ers who DIDN'T suck. And Tiffiany utilized her Chinese to ask a very nervous (but adorable) little girl to take our picture:
Next up was some continued strolling and a stop by my personal favorite Kaohsiung gelato place--two scoops for 100NT (~3USD) of some of the BEST gelato ever. Tonight, I went for dark cherry and mulberry (2 separate flavors) and they were to DIE for. Then we kept strolling.
And, thankfully, this ISN'T actually going to be our last hang-out like we'd originally thought. We made plans to go see BRAVE tomorrow (wow, I'm big on the Caps Lock tonight...sorry about that). Brave, for those who don't know, is this:
All I have to say is: Disney/Pixar? Check. Scottish? Check. Archery? Check. COUNT ME IN!
I had a pretty decent day, all considered. Watched most of a Scottish miniseries starring David Tennant--which, obviously, made me want to throw all my stuff in a bag and MOVE THERE NOW, though I resisted. FINALLY turned in my application for what I might do come September--and then accidentally half-way applied to a job in New York, which was odd. And grotesquely ironic: this job was posted on the website for a major publisher, and was one of FOUR fantastic jobs now posted on that site for which I may actually be qualified. Of course, I found them directly after mentally committing to another program. Sigh. Now to determine whether I should apply to them anyway...probably?
But the highlight of my day was easily my dinner plans. I met up with Tiffiany and our Chinese teacher, Mandy, at a great little Western-style restaurant on the Love River called Sandwich Island (and, stupid person that I am, I completely spaced that the dragon boat races going on would mean parking would be impossible--so I was 15 minutes late). The food was scrumptious, of course (fried chicken sandwich--mmm), and Mandy was so sweet--she brought Tiffiany and I some fantastic going away presents! Cue the part where I wish I'd brought more gifts to give away...
So we had our little meal, and then strolled along the Love River with the hordes of other people, watching dragon boat-ers who DIDN'T suck. And Tiffiany utilized her Chinese to ask a very nervous (but adorable) little girl to take our picture:
 |
| Extra smiles for our new 小朋友! |
 |
| It's so PRETTY when you're not being forced down it with paddles in your hands! |
 |
| Hey look, they're winning by almost as much as we lost by! (butnotreally) |
And, thankfully, this ISN'T actually going to be our last hang-out like we'd originally thought. We made plans to go see BRAVE tomorrow (wow, I'm big on the Caps Lock tonight...sorry about that). Brave, for those who don't know, is this:
All I have to say is: Disney/Pixar? Check. Scottish? Check. Archery? Check. COUNT ME IN!
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Technobabble and casserole
Considering that I spent the first portion of my day doing very little at school (the result of a combination of my lingering sickness and the fact that, due to said sickness, Maggie had adapted to teaching this particular lesson plan solo), I must look to my post-school day for a subject today.
Except, wait, I did very little in that, too.
Essentially, I got my computer to play DVDs. Which, as it turns out, is much easier said than done. My computer is a netbook, which means it has no internal CD/DVD reader. No big deal, right? I'll just go buy one.
Step 1: You go to Carrefour. You'd seen DVD drives for sale in a Carrefour in Taitung, and assumed their merchandise would be fairly uniform. Nope.
Step 2: Call Fonda. Always the last word in solving problems. :)
Step 3: Go with Fonda and Brittany to get Brittany's iPod fixed (the screen broke this morning at 7:30am--go ahead, ask me how I know precisely when it broke, despite originally being asleep, haha).
Step 4: Go with Fonda to the electronics store and buy an external CD/DVD drive.
Story over, right? Well...no.
Step 5: Take several hours out of the process, so as to put together an incredibly involved Powerpoint of sports from around the world to teach to the 6th graders tomorrow. Promise yourself you won't even try to watch a movie until you're done. Stick to your promise, until...
Step 6: You get hungry and decide to make something resembling a casserole out of leftover cream of corn soup, rice, chicken, onions, carrots, and cheese. It turns out pretty well (hooray!), and you realize that you now have a chunk of free time in which no one would blame you for not trying to type while eating.
Step 7: Attempt to install new DVD drive and discover that neither of the two separate software packages that came with the drive have anything to do with just playing music. Try fiddling with various players, only to discover that Windows 7 Starter doesn't have the right drivers installed to decode DVDs. Go online to discover that, while Vista and XP have plenty of (often free) downloads to fix similar problems, Windows 7 just recommends upgrading to a higher version of Windows 7. The problem with that, of course, is that you have a netbook; there's a reason you only run Starter, and it's that there's not enough space for a crap-ton of programming!
Step 8: Play it safe and save current settings in case of a reboot.
Step 9: Begin downloading random crap from the Internet that says it will fix your problem. Some of it doesn't. Most of it doesn't. But then...
Step 10: One program works. You are happy and watch a movie.
Oh, and at some point, you finished the Powerpoint and sent it to your co-teacher and host mom. So it was a happy ending, with movies and casserole for all.
The end.
Except, wait, I did very little in that, too.
Essentially, I got my computer to play DVDs. Which, as it turns out, is much easier said than done. My computer is a netbook, which means it has no internal CD/DVD reader. No big deal, right? I'll just go buy one.
Step 1: You go to Carrefour. You'd seen DVD drives for sale in a Carrefour in Taitung, and assumed their merchandise would be fairly uniform. Nope.
Step 2: Call Fonda. Always the last word in solving problems. :)
Step 3: Go with Fonda and Brittany to get Brittany's iPod fixed (the screen broke this morning at 7:30am--go ahead, ask me how I know precisely when it broke, despite originally being asleep, haha).
Step 4: Go with Fonda to the electronics store and buy an external CD/DVD drive.
Story over, right? Well...no.
Step 5: Take several hours out of the process, so as to put together an incredibly involved Powerpoint of sports from around the world to teach to the 6th graders tomorrow. Promise yourself you won't even try to watch a movie until you're done. Stick to your promise, until...
Step 6: You get hungry and decide to make something resembling a casserole out of leftover cream of corn soup, rice, chicken, onions, carrots, and cheese. It turns out pretty well (hooray!), and you realize that you now have a chunk of free time in which no one would blame you for not trying to type while eating.
Step 7: Attempt to install new DVD drive and discover that neither of the two separate software packages that came with the drive have anything to do with just playing music. Try fiddling with various players, only to discover that Windows 7 Starter doesn't have the right drivers installed to decode DVDs. Go online to discover that, while Vista and XP have plenty of (often free) downloads to fix similar problems, Windows 7 just recommends upgrading to a higher version of Windows 7. The problem with that, of course, is that you have a netbook; there's a reason you only run Starter, and it's that there's not enough space for a crap-ton of programming!
Step 8: Play it safe and save current settings in case of a reboot.
Step 9: Begin downloading random crap from the Internet that says it will fix your problem. Some of it doesn't. Most of it doesn't. But then...
Step 10: One program works. You are happy and watch a movie.
Oh, and at some point, you finished the Powerpoint and sent it to your co-teacher and host mom. So it was a happy ending, with movies and casserole for all.
The end.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Christmas Eve
This has been the most unconventional Christmas Eve of my life, bar none. But it was wonderful.
See, I slept in. Then went to Dream Mall with my lovely host sister Emily, finished my Christmas shopping, and went to go see Mission Impossible 4 (surprisingly good for a fourth installment).
And then my marvelous host parents Margaret and James came, and we had delicious beef noodles for dinner.
And then I was able to find all of the ingredients for Nanaimo bars--the culmination of a many-day search--at Carrefour and the baking store on the way home.
And then I got home and found Brittany and Chialing making preparations for our evening together with Rachel, Fonda, Chialing, Chialing's nephew and a friend. And now we're going to watch Sherlock Holmes 2.
Not what I would normally be doing on Christmas Eve. AT ALL. But still lots of fun. :)
See, I slept in. Then went to Dream Mall with my lovely host sister Emily, finished my Christmas shopping, and went to go see Mission Impossible 4 (surprisingly good for a fourth installment).
And then my marvelous host parents Margaret and James came, and we had delicious beef noodles for dinner.
And then I was able to find all of the ingredients for Nanaimo bars--the culmination of a many-day search--at Carrefour and the baking store on the way home.
And then I got home and found Brittany and Chialing making preparations for our evening together with Rachel, Fonda, Chialing, Chialing's nephew and a friend. And now we're going to watch Sherlock Holmes 2.
Not what I would normally be doing on Christmas Eve. AT ALL. But still lots of fun. :)
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Technical difficulties...and spaghetti
As of 3pm here today, I was supposed to have hit 'submit' on my application and have been finished. In fact, my plan was to do it earlier than 3pm (which would have been midnight 9/23 in Seattle--end of the deadline); to this end, I turned on my computer around 10:30am. And when I did, I found...nothing.
I don't mean to imply that my essays were gone. Rather, the website was. I went to log on to discover a page saying it had suffered a fatal error, listing an email address to contact, and a whole host of error messages. I emailed the listed address and got back an auto-answer saying there was a fatal error with that address and listing a second one; I emailed that and got the same answer. Gulp.
So I emailed SPU's liaison, and discovered that people had been having problems with it all day--which was then confirmed by an email from one of the professors whom I'd asked to submit a recommendation for me. Fortunately, though, the liaison told me it would be fine to submit it late--a grace I didn't fully appreciate at the moment, but we'll get to that.
So the rest of the day was spent in watching shows, reading articles, and periodically checking back in with the application web site, to see if it had healed itself. (It never had.)
Then, around 5:30, I went to Chialing's to meet up with her, Samia, Emily and Lydia for a night of Italian food we'd planned yesterday. It was delicious, and such a welcome change! Chialing and Samia--who is pretty much the nicest person you'll ever meet--had pretty much done all of the cooking by the time I got there, so I felt bad that I couldn't participate in the cooking part of the plan, but the EATING part was wonderful!
And as an added bonus, Fonda and her niece, who everyone calls "little Fonda" were there at first, and "little Fonda," who's about 4, wasn't as scared of me this time, and even gave me a high-5! No way not to love that. :)
Emily and Lydia were running a little late because they'd been in Zuoying with Karina and playing with the puppies, and while we ate, Samia and I started chatting about our days, and I mentioned my oh-so-fun tangle with technology. She asked what my application was for, and when I said the Marshall and started to explain, she cut me off with "I know." Turns out, she applied last year, made it to the interview stage, and applied again this year, thinking that Fulbright would have pushed her application over the edge (which I am 100% sure it would have--she is superwoman even without the Fulbright), but her university turned her down because of a missed deadline.
See, I told you we'd get there. And it wasn't even her missed deadline, or the Marshall's deadline, which is still a week away even now. Her recommenders hadn't turned in their letters before her campus (read: phone call in the middle of the night here) interview, so, after the interview, they told her no. Absolute insanity--one arbitrary deadline missed by the applicant's contacts, with a full month to go before the real deadline, and they won't back the person who is undoubtedly their best chance for winning a prestigious award?
Really made me grateful for SPU's graciousness today.
After Italian food, we set out for the movies, where we watched "Crazy Stupid Love," with Steve Carrell, which was brilliantly funny and (at times) poignant, I thought. Definitely worth a watch.
Then it was back to my computer, where I discovered two things: the web site was working again, and I had previously missed several sections I needed to fill in. Good time I waited till I was fully awake and functioning before I hit send! Prayers for my application would be greatly appreciated. And hey, if I get an interview, I'll be back in the States for a few days in November sometime!
Anyway, now that my application is in, my self-embargo on book-reading has been lifted. So I've really got to go. :)
I don't mean to imply that my essays were gone. Rather, the website was. I went to log on to discover a page saying it had suffered a fatal error, listing an email address to contact, and a whole host of error messages. I emailed the listed address and got back an auto-answer saying there was a fatal error with that address and listing a second one; I emailed that and got the same answer. Gulp.
So I emailed SPU's liaison, and discovered that people had been having problems with it all day--which was then confirmed by an email from one of the professors whom I'd asked to submit a recommendation for me. Fortunately, though, the liaison told me it would be fine to submit it late--a grace I didn't fully appreciate at the moment, but we'll get to that.
So the rest of the day was spent in watching shows, reading articles, and periodically checking back in with the application web site, to see if it had healed itself. (It never had.)
Then, around 5:30, I went to Chialing's to meet up with her, Samia, Emily and Lydia for a night of Italian food we'd planned yesterday. It was delicious, and such a welcome change! Chialing and Samia--who is pretty much the nicest person you'll ever meet--had pretty much done all of the cooking by the time I got there, so I felt bad that I couldn't participate in the cooking part of the plan, but the EATING part was wonderful!
And as an added bonus, Fonda and her niece, who everyone calls "little Fonda" were there at first, and "little Fonda," who's about 4, wasn't as scared of me this time, and even gave me a high-5! No way not to love that. :)
Emily and Lydia were running a little late because they'd been in Zuoying with Karina and playing with the puppies, and while we ate, Samia and I started chatting about our days, and I mentioned my oh-so-fun tangle with technology. She asked what my application was for, and when I said the Marshall and started to explain, she cut me off with "I know." Turns out, she applied last year, made it to the interview stage, and applied again this year, thinking that Fulbright would have pushed her application over the edge (which I am 100% sure it would have--she is superwoman even without the Fulbright), but her university turned her down because of a missed deadline.
See, I told you we'd get there. And it wasn't even her missed deadline, or the Marshall's deadline, which is still a week away even now. Her recommenders hadn't turned in their letters before her campus (read: phone call in the middle of the night here) interview, so, after the interview, they told her no. Absolute insanity--one arbitrary deadline missed by the applicant's contacts, with a full month to go before the real deadline, and they won't back the person who is undoubtedly their best chance for winning a prestigious award?
Really made me grateful for SPU's graciousness today.
After Italian food, we set out for the movies, where we watched "Crazy Stupid Love," with Steve Carrell, which was brilliantly funny and (at times) poignant, I thought. Definitely worth a watch.
Then it was back to my computer, where I discovered two things: the web site was working again, and I had previously missed several sections I needed to fill in. Good time I waited till I was fully awake and functioning before I hit send! Prayers for my application would be greatly appreciated. And hey, if I get an interview, I'll be back in the States for a few days in November sometime!
Anyway, now that my application is in, my self-embargo on book-reading has been lifted. So I've really got to go. :)
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