The last five weeks have been great. I met many wonderful girls from Taiwan whom I miss very much! It was pretty busy and I didn't always get much sleep but I had a great experience. I think all of the girls enjoyed their stay in the USA so that's what is the most important. I guess you would think that if you are visiting America you wouldn't go to Kirksville of all places lol. But we made weekend trips to St. Louis, Kansas City, and Jeff City/Columbia. So at least we weren't stuck in Kville the whole time and the girls could go shopping (which they love).

I think the girls really enjoyed the freedom they had here. It seems like their lives are a lot more controlled in Taiwan. Some of them took advantage of being able to talk to boys :-)  and probably creeped some people out by adding people they just met on facebook and then chatting with them lol  Or if the boys knew what they thought about them (one of the girls said she loved one of the boys and wanted to marry him and was serious), they would be scared. Looking beyond the creepiness, they were all really sweet and sometimes a bit crazy. I got close to one of the girls named Vita (nicknamed Evil Baby - she dressed up as a baby on our "Halloween day" and somehow did something evil, I guess) She is really cute and her English is very good so we talked a lot and went on "dates". That started because in class they were practicing inviting people to do something (aka learning to be more creepy lol) and then accepting or refusing the invitation. And I invited her to lunch in the dining hall. On the girls' last night, we stayed up the whole night and took them to Walmart and Pancake City at midnight (we had to show them typical college student life!). We left for KC at 4:30am and I watched the sunrise with Vita. That was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. Saying good bye really was hard. Nearly everyone cried, including myself. I hope I can see them again one day. I miss those girls. I have so many stories and memories.

Last week I was running 4 to 5 miles everyday...but then on Friday my legs didn't want to work :)  We went to KC with the girls this weekend so I had a day off from running today. Tomorrow we're going swimming at Thousand Hills so it will be nice to get some exercise in a way other than running. And I've been wanting to go swimming for months now. Let's see if I can still swim 1000 meters.

I had a good weekend though. We took the girls to see a baseball game and apparently they really love baseball. It's popular in Taiwan. Today we went to the Nelson and then shopping. I bought a new pair of running shoes since I disparately needed some. I also bought a pair of shorts and pants..apparently I've lost a lot of weight because I now fit into smaller sizes that I haven't been able to wear since I started high school. Well I've noticed the weight loss since I now have to wear a belt with a lot of things.

But I'm so disappointed that the US lost in soccer :( :( :(   I was hoping that if we made it further that people would start watching soccer more..but they actually played that game on local tv so there must have been an audience.
We'll now I'm rooting for Germany. They play in the morning...

I went running tonight on a trail I have never been before. I wish I had started running there a long time ago. This trail is basically out in the middle of nowhere so it was so peaceful and nice. It was getting dark when I left so I saw so many fire flies and also three deer! They startled me a bit since I wasn't expecting to see moving objects in the field next to me. And then there was lightning halfway through my run so that added an interesting touch to the scenery. So I am definitely running there again. I don't think I will be able to run the whole thing by the end of this summer since the trails are so long but it's very beautiful there.

mood: tired music: Wir sind Helden

So I'm just chilling in the language lab while the Taiwanese girls are working on their powerpoint presentations. It reminds me of the summer I spent in Kirksville two years ago..I spent a lot of time at this computer since I worked here four hours a day. That was a fun summer even though I was in Kirksville for most of it. This one is turning out to be very good as well. The girls are all very sweet and try hard to speak English. Over the weekend we went to St. Loiuis with them. It was hot though and the top of my head burned a little. ouch

During my time off I am trying to study for the GRE. I don't know when I'm going to take it but I want to get the best score I can since retaking it won't be an option because of the price.
I am still eagerly awaiting a reply from the guy from the bilingual school in Germany about getting work permission. I would like to know soon since I would have to buy a plane ticket  and I don't want the only cheap option left to be Air India. That would seriously suck. Please don't take too long bureaucracy.

I'm heading to Kirksville tomorrow to work at Taiwan at Truman for 5 weeks. It should be a lot of fun so I'm really looking forward to it. So on this program there are 17-18 year old girls coming over to learn English. I'm basically helping with everything - from waking them up to helping in the classroom. There are a lot of activities planned and we're going to take a few trips (stl, kc, jeff city).

After this thing up in Kville I'm hoping to get an internship in Germany at a bilingual school. I've been emailing with this guy from there and we're working on getting me work permission right now so it sounds promising. If I don't get that then I may be stuck at home for a year working somewhere. I've applied to about 5 jobs and haven't heard back from any of them (and I'm so discouraged by descriptions of "entry level" positions: 2-3 years of experience)...so hopefully this internship will work out. I'm not so sure if I'll apply for a Fulbright teaching assistantship if I work at a school next year. I'm not sure if I want to do that two years in a row, especially when I'm not planning on becoming a teacher. I went up to my high school for a couple of weeks to sit in on German classes and most of them are pretty bad. So much time is wasted and some students aren't interested and don't try. I think I would get too frustrated..and it was just strange going back to a high school after being at college for 4 years. The American school system is just so sad.

Things are going pretty well right now in general. I'm not freaking out about what I'm going to do for once. I'm still looking at different grad schools/programs. I am probably going to apply to a bunch of stuff and then choose. I'm also considering schools in the US so that means I need to take the GRE. yay

I'm graduating in week. I'm so freaked out.

I just saw Flogging Molly in concert! Probably one of the best concerts I've been to. I'm most definitely am going to have bruises all over; it got a bit rough sometimes ;) I made a couple of mistakes. 1. I wore a watch. 2. I wore glasses. I've already got bruises around my wrist where my watch was. And I was just a bit afraid being thrown around that I could hurt my glasses. But the people weren't too wild. They watched out for others most of the time.
I really needed that. The last few days have been rather annoying.

Russian Club dinner this Sunday!!!

I think I should sleep well tonight...finally

mood: exhausted music: ringing in my ears

5 tests and a capstone presentation away from graduating! I'm finished with my capstone translation (finally, translating from Russian to German was pretty tough). And I need to finish up the SILO project (I'm working with Kelly and Kara to make a new program for intermediate German tutoring). I'm also working on applying for jobs and writing cover letters (so hard ahhh). I went to the career center and someone looked over my resume and I want to edit my cover letter and take that in tomorrow if I have time. I'm going to be applying for this job called Coordinator for International Programing at Washington University. I would be responsible for planning events for international students and a bunch of other stuff. Could be exciting. Now that I think about it more, I think I want to work a year before I go to grad school. And by working I mean not retail or food, but a real full-time job. I could figure out if that was the type of work I like doing or if I would rather get my master's in whatever. And I would have money. I'm just afraid that I won't get a job. I'm going to apply to some others but I think the one at WashU is the most interesting..but who gets the first job they apply for?


Anyways..I'm looking forward to the weekend. Friday night is the Flogging Molly concert which should be awesome! And then Russian Club dinner is on Sunday. I think there is going to be a good turn out. And even this guy who is running for state representative is going to be there. Apparently he was a Russian-Chechen-Ukrainian-Georgian Linguist in the military. crazy!!!

So I had this dream that I was riding a bus powered by green tea. Wouldn't it be cool if green tea had enough potential energy to do that?

mood: busy tags: russian club, the future

I came back to Kirksville and the snow is gone! Spring is here!

I had three tests yesterday.....and I totally rocked them all!!

I wish I could do nothing now, but I'm behind on my capstone and more of it is due tomorrow..ahhh

mood: hungry