你好嗎？我很好！

As you can see, my Chinese classes are progressing slowly. :D We're getting into character memorization now, which is definitely the hardest part for me of the Chinese learning process. So far I've amassed a total of about 60 characters, but this is only to read them (without the aid of phonics, which I've become fairly fluent at reading with the help of). Of those, I can write from memory perhaps twenty characters? This really isn't a lot, considering at the end of your first year of study at Feng Chia, the goal is to know about 3,000. Waaaah!
Chinese is a funnily literal language. They stick words together to make phrases that mean other words, for example the word for "electricity" and "brain" together make the word computer (literally "electric brain"). Same with elevator: "Electric ladder". etc. This makes it easy to memorize vocabulary in some ways.
So, I've come to the midterm point in the semester, which means I'm half done with the 001 level course! Yay! As of today, I plan to continue into the next semester which starts in December. I say as of today, because I am yet unsure of the situation at JacksonFive with Teacher Karen possibly needing a whole lot more time off for medical leave, and if this indeed becomes the case and I have to sub for her again, I will choose to postpone the second semester of Chinese school. I will otherwise risk failing the semester for lack of sufficient time to study, since the 101 classes are significantly more difficult than the one I'm in now, in which case I fail I will lose a bunch of my hard-earned tuition money, or I will risk severe burnout from both studies and teaching, and I'm already slightly burned out on teaching from the time I've already spent subbing and teaching the last couple of years. So we'll see how the year continues. I'm taking it one day at a time. Which is why I said, as of today, my plan is to continue my studies.
I've already found it quite a bit easier to do many things I do on a daily basis, like ordering tea or food, or filling up with gas, or even making "small talk" in the courtyard. So that's nice!
Let's see, what else can I fit into this most uninteresting blog post? Well, today I went grocery shopping. I say grocery shopping, when I really just mean shopping because I bought no actual groceries. Nothing to eat. I did buy a large cheap-o tub of Chinese hair conditioner because I needed some, I am on a budget which I must make myself stick to, and because it smelled nice. So off and on throughout my evening, I have been thinking about the cheap tub of conditioner in my bathroom and wondering if it will make my hair nice and if I will find out that all these years I've been wasting money on overpriced hair conditioner when I could have been stocking up on the cheap-o $2USD tubs of Chinese formula. This is what I think about when my mind wanders. It's very boring. I will keep you posted.
I also bought three humongolous giantuarous bottles of contact lens storing solution, only to find out I already had two, when I'd thought I was out. So I can now supply contact solution to a small village of African contact lens wearers.
I also bought us a new food garbage bucket, as the old one, when I finally took out the food garbage last week, was.... extremely yucky, to say the least, and it scart me a lot. So I bought a new and improved one that I have high hopes for.
It's really sad when the only thing you can think to blog about is high hopes for a food garbage bucket. I must need to go to bed.
So, I will leave you at this, my blog readers. I hope you are all doing very well, and having more success with your grocery shopping than I did, and that you have all found great deals on your hair conditioners and that your food garbage buckets are faring better than ours did.
Zai jian! :D