Hey everyone!

I can't believe it's already Saturday and that it has been an entire week since I posted. Unfortunately I don't have any crazy plans this weekend to share with you all, but what I do have is some updates about school and this week!

Lets start with Monday and work our way to Friday. 

On Monday I had my first day of Flagship tutoring (writing + reading). For those of you that don't remember, I am a member of Manoa's Chinese Flagship Program. This is in addition to my Chinese major, and is essentially a way to achieve a much higher language level than just simply majoring in Chinese. It is a federally funded program which encourages students to study abroad (or intensively) as much as possible. Additionally, the Flagship can be achieved with any degree. There are three ways to use the Flagship program. For some they major in Chinese in addition to their other major, and, in my case, you can major in Chinese with recognition in the Chinese Flagship. The third way is simply getting a certificate in Chinese. 

Tutoring was very interesting. In my writing section there are two other girls. My teacher for this section is also my reading one, interestingly enough. For writing we were told that throughout the semester we would switch between typing sentences and writing sentences. He said we won't have homework and that he will meet with each of us every session to help us write. After writing I had my reading session, which was just a little bit different. 

In my reading session there was only myself and my tutor. I was given a piece of paper with a passage on it and some questions. He instructed that first I would read the passage very quickly and then he would ask me questions (in Chinese, mind you) and then, once I'm done answering, I would reread the passage slowly and look for important details. Once reading he would ask me some more questions about the passage. 

Thankfully after tutoring I only had class to go to. I didn't work this day so I was able to go back to my dorms and begin working on my homework. I ended up staying up extremely late preparing for my first Chinese exam, but by 2:30 I was exhausted and needed to sleep.

Tuesday came and I was met with my first midterm of the semester. A cumulative exam covering chapters 11 and 12, the Chinese test was surprisingly better than I thought it would be. There was fill in the blanks, translation, listening, true & false, and some reading passages. Thankfully there was no writing portion, as that would have been too much for me to handle. I don't want to jinx anything, but I think I did fairly well on that test. Let's hope for the best!

Tuesday was also my sociology midterm. I won't say any more than that. 

Lastly, Tuesday was the day I had my first speaking session with my speaking tutor. My speaking tutor is a different person who spoke rapid fire Mandarin with me the second she walked in the room. It was very intimidating and I won't lie, I struggled with keeping up. However, I found that at the end she was very kind and even found it funny how I told her she speaks Chinese much faster than I anticipated. I don't expect her to slow down, as the point of the Flagship is to get you to the highest degree possible in such a short time, but I hope that I made her more conscious of the fact that I had trouble keeping up. I think that speaking with her and my Chinese teacher will prove to be two very helpful things in effecting my speaking proficiency. 

Unfortunately I worked on Tuesday, so the rest of my day was spent working. Afterwords I went back to my dorm and proceeded to stay up late, again, and finish my Chinese homework for the next day.

Sleep deprived and already over the week was how I greeted Wednesday, except this time there was no test I had to take and no tutoring. Because of this the day went by pretty quickly, except for when I had to work the closing shift. 

Thursday came and I wasn't able to sleep in. I had tutoring with my Chinese teacher in the morning and afterwords went to my sociology class. Sociology was interesting because I was finally able to meet with him and talk about this semester. Sociology is one of my honors classes and probably the one I'm doing my absolute worst in. He seems to think that I'll do fine, but we'll see. I don't like uncertainty when it comes to my classes. 

After sociology I went to work and then my dorm, where I was able to get some homework done relatively early and, for the first time all year, even had time to read before bed. Right now I'm reading a book Eric gave me called "Black Island". It's a comic-book with lots of Chinese dialogue. I've taken to keeping a notecard on each page where I can write down any words or phrases I don't know. So far the book is pretty interesting, but I've gotten lazy and haven't been translating as much, so I'm sure there's some important pieces of the plot that I'm missing. 

On Friday I didn't have work, so I woke up feeling more relaxed and happier. I also only had two classes, so my day was over at 1:20. I even took a nap, which is becoming a reoccurring action. Before college I never napped, now I seem to take one once every few weeks. 

After class I hung out with the girls and later applied to my first summer program. My teacher recommended that I look into the summer program at one of the Flagship colleges, so I did. I would much rather study my Chinese in China, but my teacher said she thinks Indiana will be best so that I can solidify a strong grammar foundation. The application was surprisingly quick, and I was able to complete everything in a matter of hours. I'm looking to apply to a few others, but I know that my teacher would like to talk to me some more about them so until then I will only look at these programs and not apply just yet. 

And now we've made it to Saturday! Unfortunately the weather is horrible and has prevented me from leaving my building. I really want to go to the beach, but it looks like I'm going to have to wait. I also really want to see the sunrise, so I might go to Waikiki tomorrow morning and watch the sun come out and take in the beach before it's covered in tourists. The girls don't seem too apt to coming, so it might just be me out there. I'll keep you updated. 

Besides all of this, I don't believe that I have any plans for the weekend. I brought up hiking Crouching Lion to the others, but with all the rain that we've gotten it might be too dangerous to hike it. Maybe I can convince them to do a waterfall hike instead. Maybe I'll finally go to China Walls? 

Lastly, because I know that this post is getting to be pretty long, I have some good news! Just yesterday I found out that I've been awarded a new scholarship at Manoa for $5,000. The only condition (and I'm not exaggerating) is that I continue to attend UH. The email was short and concise, and told me that because I have been in good academic standing that I have been awarded $5,000. It goes on to read that "In case you're considering leaving..." and explains that the award will be dispersed in the fall and spring, if I continue to live in Hawaii. The sender actually sounded worried that I was considering leaving the school, as I could tell in the subject and throughout the email that they were trying to persuade me to stay. I can't find any of the requirements online that explain why I was awarded the scholarship, but because this is their first year with the scholarship I'm sure more information will be released as more people are given the award. Regardless, I won't ask any questions. I know this is going to help a lot next year and am glad that my handwork is paying off. If I'm honest, I have been thinking what would have happened had I gone to another school instead of Manoa, among other things, and getting this email is not something that would have happened at other universities.