Hey guys!

This is going to be a pretty weird post, I would just like to put that out there. 

Not because of the context, but because of the timing. Interestingly enough, this is the time during the school year that I have to think more about what I'm going to be doing this summer. 

As a Chinese major who has gone a more intensive route of language study (via the Flagship) I would like to point out that over the past few weeks I have been in the process of applying for summer language study. 

Given my level of Chinese, my options have come down to two places: 

1. Indiana University
2. Capital Normal University, Beijing

Now many people, I think, are confused as to why IU is on my list to begin with. However, I wasn't alone in making the decisions. I went to both the Flagship department and my Chinese teacher, and both told my that Indiana should be on my list. I'm very hesitant to even consider IU, but I applied nonetheless. 

I applied to Capital Normal and found out last week that I had been accepted. 

This is great news, but unfortunately puts me in an awkward position with the flagship department and my teacher, who both are seemingly pretty adamant on getting me to choose Indiana. 

Ultimately I'm looking at this as something I don't have to do, only something that I'm encouraged to do. I worry that if I go to Indiana I will come back and still continue in the 300 level, whereas if I go to China I can start in the fall at the 400 level language classes. Also, since I'm going to be improving my language skills, wouldn't it make more sense to actually go to the country where the language is spoken? It's a hard decision, to some a very obvious one, but I feel like it's one that's going to be hard to make that will please everyone. If I go with Indiana, then I miss out on going to China, but if I go to China, I leave my teacher and flagship department both upset (for lack of a better word). I shouldn't take other people's wants into consideration, as this will be a decision that I have to live with, but it's hard when your teacher herself is telling you where she thinks you should go. 


Besides that, I have about 2 weeks to come up with a decision. In that time, I have to finalize my IU application and continue to stay on top of things in my classes. I only have one more midterm and it's in Chinese, and once that's done I can relax a little bit. 

Spring break is also coming up in about two weeks, and I am really excited for that. Two of my friends are going back to Colorado, but the other one decided she wanted to island hop with me. We agreed on Kauai, so it looks like in two weeks we will be touring the island! It's exciting being able to go to a new island, but Kauai (as we're finding out) is a very hard island to see without a car and, naturally, neither of us are 21 so renting is out of the question. 

I feel a little bad that I haven't been on the blog as much, but I promise once more interesting things start happening that I will try and post more. Things have been pretty routine here lately, so there's not much else to talk about. I also haven't been out much, so my posts won't be as exciting as they could be. I'm going to try and work on that.

Until next time,

Aislinn