A Few Announcements:

I wanted to let you all know that I have linked my roommate's, my classmate's, and my sister's blog. You'll see them all on the right hand side of this page. Sarah, my roommate, writes a great blog titled "Sarah's Year in China". Megan, my sister, recently started a blog titled "Tales of the Kingdom", and will be documenting her year in the Master's Commission Externship program. Deborah, my classmate, also has a blog focused on this year spent in China. It's called "Footprints in Asia". All three of these are highly recommended.

Besides the blogs mentioned above, there are quite a few others that you can reach via links to this page. My personal favorites are: Dave Barry's Blog, Underneath Their Robes, Powerline, and talktalkchina. If you ever have time to kill, these are great places to visit. Just be careful though, one stop could mean the rest of your afternoon.

Onto other business- After proscratinating what seems like a lifetime, I have finally bought a microphone for my computer. You can now talk to me live via AOL Instant Messenger, or through Googletalk. My AIM screenname is lldevere, Googletalk is deverel. I'm usually available in the morning and evening hours, PST. Also, if you have Googletalk, you can leave a voicemail for me and I'll check it when I'm back in.

And now for the news- Classes have been keeping me pretty busy. Besides just taking Chinese, I'm also taking Chinese History Before the Yuan Dynasty, Modern Chinese Politics, and Chinese Archeology. And did I mention research?

Chinese language classe requires at least three hours of my day. In addition to the basic three-hours of class, I also have an afternoon class once a week. I don't spend as much time on homework as I should, in part because they don't assign as much as I'd expect. I'll be meeting with a Chinese student once a week to practice my listening and speaking. We've agreed to meet each week alternating between English and Chinese. I think this is a pretty good deal; I don't feel I'm being taken advantage of because of my English, and she won't have to spend the whole time answering questions about the correct measure word for chopsticks.

The woman who teaches my spoken Chinese class put me in touch with this new language partner. There are only a few native English speakers in my Chinese class, and only a couple of those are American. I find that most of the "how would you say it in English?" questions are thrown my way. Anyway, my teacher asked me after class if I was an American, and if I would be willing to work with her friend on English if she would work with me on Chinese. Like I said, sounds like a fair deal to me. I'll be meeting the student on Monday.

My teacher also invited me to take part in a friend of a friend of a friend's project developing computer software for students of Chinese. We'll all be seeing the program on Sunday, and then going out to dinner to discuss our thoughts. If I feel that the program is good, it might be worth purchasing (or "testing"). If it sucks- Well, it was a free meal.

I've been slowly working my way through a mass of paperwork courtesy of my home university. In order to conduct my research project, I had to submit an application along with some other documentation to the university to await approval. Apparently, doing the paperwork process over several times is almost a given.

As for starting my research project, I contacted my advisor in Chengdu and asked him if he would contact the school for deaf children that I want to visit. I received an email back from him saying that I needed to contact the International Student Office, as they would be more official. I did so, and received a reply that they were working on it, but that it would take a while. I'm not quite sure what the hold up is, my suspicion is that they are making things deliberately hard hoping that I'll just stop nagging them. I'm still waiting to see what happens. I don't have to visit the school, it just sounded like a really nice jumping off point.

There has, however, been one major development in the way of research. I'm sure I've told most of you about this; I met another American who is knowledgable about Chinese Sign Language. She seemed really excited to find out that I was doing research on deafness in China, and is eager to help. She speaks way better Chinese than I do, and already is somewhat proficient in CSL. I showed her my work so far, and gave her some of the resources I had brought with me. I'm excited to have her along. It will be great having someone else's input and thoughts on this project.

And lastly, I've been thinking a lot lately about what I'm going to do when I graduate. I don't have any plans yet, but it feels as though next year is going to suddenly show up, and I need to be ready. It's a little strange, I've been in school for so long and known what the goal was from the beginning. I don't really know how to make a new plan for after graduation. I'm tempted to just apply for or test for whatever sounds interesting, and just see what sort of responses I get. Then, based on those responses, take my next step.

In reality, I have plenty of time before that comes. I just like to plan and think things way ahead...

Have a good weekend everyone!