Archive for March, 2011

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I Should Be a Travel Agent

March 22nd, 2011 by Manda | 4 Comments | Filed in Travel, Work

(Was going to post the next installment of my much-overdue travel recaps but the notoriously unreliable Internet in China is not letting me upload photos. So this post will have to do instead :P)

I’ve become a pro at planning out the logistics of traveling within China. Trains, buses, flights, hostels, public transport – I’ve got that all figured out.

My trip to Huangshan last fall was my first crash course in getting accustomed to how the train system works in China. Traveling throughout southern China taught me all I needed to know about using buses, trains, and more questionable forms of transport (like hitching a ride on the back of a rickshaw) to travel between cities and remote towns. And my most recent trips to Tianjin and Nanjing a few weeks ago have cemented my belief that when it comes to planning travel in China, I am worth my weight in gold.

I realize this is a pretty dull read for anyone that isn’t a total travel nerd or has had experience traveling on their own in China, but there’s something to be said about being more confident planning out travel logistics in a foreign country than in a home country. It’s just so much easier and cheaper to travel in China. Every city is connected to another city somehow, and it doesn’t cost an arm and leg to get from Point A to Point B!

I Can’t Write Papers Anymore

March 21st, 2011 by Manda | 8 Comments | Filed in School

I have not written any sort of essay, paper, or thesis since April 2010. To top that off, I have been (intensively) studying nothing but Mandarin Chinese since September. So, let’s imagine for a second what happened when I tried to write my term paper proposal for my only English class this semester, Chinese Media Studies.

If you guessed that it sucked, that’s a very, very kind guess.

I can’t seem to string together a coherent argument anymore. My sentences have become repetitive, identically structured, and lack the power of persuasion an argumentative research paper is meant to contain. A lot of this is probably because I’m simply out of practice at writing papers, but I think I’m also out of practice with using the English language in a formal context. Or in any context, really. Yesterday, it took a friend and I five minutes to come up with the correct English definition of the Chinese word “矛盾” (textbook definition is contradiction or contradictory, but I find a more accurate definition is conflict or conflicted). It wasn’t that we didn’t know how to use the word in Chinese, we just couldn’t think of how to explain the meaning in English!

Right now, I have a (very) rough term paper proposal written up. Every time I read it over in an attempt to fix the many things wrong with my writing, I cringe. I’m a communications major; writing is my passion. I’m good at it, dammit. But now my writing reads like English isn’t my native language. The writing in my proposal has a slight awkwardness and stilted feeling to it – and that has never, ever happened to me before, no matter what type of writing.

I guess it’s nice that my professor’s first language isn’t English, so maybe he’ll look kindly at my much-left-to-be-desired essay writing, at least for this proposal. But now I’m worried about how I’m going to cope with my classes senior year, when I’m taking the last couple course requirements for my comm major…

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I Need to Get My Life in Order

March 19th, 2011 by Manda | 3 Comments | Filed in Life

There are about a million and one things I need to do to get my life in somewhat working order from now until the end of summer. But of course, in typical me fashion, I am putting things off with the excuse of being extremely busy during the week (true) and going out too much on the weekend to have time to sit down and start sorting everything out (also true).

There are little things I need to do, like write my term paper proposal for my Chinese Media Studies class. (Actually, picking a topic comes before writing the proposal, so I should probably get that done first. Which is easier said than done, seeing as I have given zero thought to a potential topic.) I also need to figure out train ticket information for an upcoming trip this weekend, where three friends and I plan on going to climb a mountain near the China/North Korean border. Laundry needs to be taken care of as well, as the heap of dirty clothes on my floor is starting to become a safety hazard when stumbling back in the early a.m. I need to figure out what classes I need to register for in the fall so that I can graduate on time next May (!!!). And how about emailing my poor mother, who hasn’t heard from me in over a week?

Then there are the bigger things, like figuring out what I am doing this summer. Once I have that figured out, I can start planning out the smaller details of my summer, like how much time/money I have to travel when I am not interning/working. I also need to get in touch with my friends/future roommates for next year and see what the current status of our living plans are. And just plain being better at keeping in touch with my friends would be good, too. I feel like I’ve fallen off the face of the earth in a lot of respects when it comes to my friendships back home. Oh, and finish writing my cover letter for a job I am applying for in the fall. And maybe even start researching when deadlines are for fall internships, because I know once summer starts I’ll be too distracted to look into that unless I already know when deadlines are?

I used to be so on top of things all the time, and the fact that I’m not anymore is such an alien feeling. But this weekend, I am going to get the ball rolling on things I should have started organizing long ago if it kills me. (Famous last words?)

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