Chinese class didn’t go so well last night. It probably had more to do with the fact that I didn’t really study than anything else. The expected comprehension level seemed to shoot way up as we were quizzed on multiple new words and phrases without being able to look in the book. At one point we were expected to be actors, memorizing lines and repeating them in Mandarin without looking. Needless to say the only person in the class that did well at this exercise was the Taiwanese guy. The class is now down to just five people (it was four last week, but someone came back). I ended up saying wang le a lot (“I forget”). <\/p>\n
After class as I was opening the door to the bathroom in the hallway one of my classmates said “hey! Do you have a minute?” This was Dharam, the Chi-Gong student I mentioned in a blog entry maybe a month ago. He was one of the few people in the class I spoke with (the other one, a girl named Ronnie, has apparently dropped out) – and ended up admitting my true reason for joining the class. He proceeded to tell me (and I wrote this down so I could remember it verbatim): “There is a lot of leftover stuff (sic) you are broadcasting into the room. I can help you with that.” He then gave me his website address<\/a> and told me to email him if I’d like his “help.”<\/p>\n So now I’m not sure if I can go back to this class. Perhaps my discomfort shows more than I thought. I suppose I’ve always worn my emotions on my sleeve for better or for worse. I wouldn’t want to spoil the class for those guys whose “study partners” are still with them and are actually getting a lot of use out of it. They started badgering us last week (class #4) to sign up for the next round of classes. This week they told us if we didn’t pay now we’d have a $50 “late” fee. Strong arm tactics have never worked on me (unless that arm is connected to a beautiful woman, then I’m helpless) – so needless to say I won’t be continuing my education at that learning center. I haven’t made up my mind about next week – but my enthusiasm is definitely starting to wain, and now I have to have an awkward conversation with Dharam (which is unavoidable when there are only four other people in the classroom).<\/p>\n In other news, my car hit 70,000 miles this morning. It isn’t yet five years old.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chinese class didn’t go so well last night. It probably had more to do with the fact that I didn’t really study than anything else. The expected comprehension level seemed to shoot way up as we were quizzed on multiple new words and phrases without being able to look in the book. At one point […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}