Good books

So, Monday night I received a book that I ordered by recommendation from Stu Jay Raj. The book is Cracking the Chinese Puzzles by T. K. Ann. After making it rather quickly through the first few chapters, I started in on the parts where it presents the ideas, maybe you should say the mindset, of the characters. I actually am really enjoying this book. I think I need to go slow through it and think carefully about each character and Bushou in order to gain full benefit from the book. It seems like the writing system should be relatively simpler after I can learn most of these. I am excited about it, but it's still overwhelming when I am trying to do regular Chinese homework in addition to Uyghur.

I also would recommend the set of textbooks Integrated Chinese for anyone who is thinking of studying Mandarin. I hear that most textbooks concentrate on the Beijing dialect (eh) 兒話, which is kind of funny when we are doing traditional characters. I prefer the traditional characters because they seem to have a lot more `character' than the simplified. That also means that they have a lot more strokes to remember. It's okay though. It's manageable.

I have modified my learning plan for the languages a little. I haven't been keeping up on Uyghur so well. Getting this midterm finished should remove the mental block I have on just studying. I will try to finish it up today. I think I will try the 10,000 sentence method of continuing to study Uyghur rather than just memorizing vocabulary. I asked my teacher to provide me with all sorts of sentences from different contexts, so that should be helpful. Japanese is going OK. I'm getting to 100 Kanji this week (about 30 more to do by the end of the week). I noticed one interesting difference between the Chinese and Japanese characters.

Special:

(Mandarin):

專

(japanese):

専

Chinese scholarly work on ethnic relations

So, today I was helping my friend with her translation of a document into English. Supposedly this will be read in front of Hu Jintao (don't know if it's the English or the Chinese version), but this is just the sort of thing that drives me crazy. Here is a brief excerpt from the paper:

By comparison with the rest of Chinese history, the last fifty years correspond with the best period for the ethnic relations in China; and by comparison with other countries all over the world, China is one of the nation with the best harmonious ethnic relations. Even if China has witnessed many disorders such as the Cultural Revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the violent changes of the Eastern Europe, it is still a stable united country. As comrade Deng Xiaoping said: “Our country is united, we solved marvelously the problem regarding ethnicity” (internal speech, 1986), “One of the best characteristics of China is not having a big ethnic dispute" (Deng Xiaoping).

I'm not really going to go into much detail here (and it's probably best that I don't actually post much of the paper), but the rest of the article screams critical thought even more. Although the first half of it is written pretty well, as soon as it actually starts talking about Chinese history, the hands start waving.

If you would care to notice, through a few waves of my hand, I can show that pigs do indeed fly.

Ok, don't get me wrong. What China has accomplished in the last several decades is amazing, and I do respect it. But this summer I was constantly hearing about this continually polished image that completely ignored the rotting internals of what is going on right in front of my eyes. So, I have somewhat distorted, extremist view, that Chinese scholarly writing involving anything to do with ethnic relations defies any sort of common sense. I do understand this is caused by governmental issues. Unfortunately, I lose respect for it. I do wish it had credibility. I think that is China did talk openly about it's problems, it would gain credibility, or maybe some just solutions could be discovered. Or maybe the country would rip itself apart. On one hand, China seems very successful, but on the other it sort of feels like it's coming apart at the seams. I do recognize that these things are a lot of my feelings, and not necessarily backed up with hard evidence to support my claims. One of my favorite quotes from the summer:

"Why did you come to China to study Chinese history? None of it is true." --a Chinese history professor to one of my friends

I think people, especially the Chinese, are very aware of that kind of hypocrisy, but what can be done?

Keeping up appearances

phew, but now the domain name is registered

I just killed this blog, but I got the database fixed. I was worried for about an hour. (I can learn enough SQL to hack my way through in a couple minutes)

Now this blog is accessible by going to the following address http://www.kealist.com. Much easier to remember.

I've been working on getting this site to look and run more like I want to, but it will still take some time. Right now, this just looks like more links on the right side.

You can always sign up for an account if you want to receive updates by email when I update the site. That way you don't have to check back. I also have probably fixed the SPAM comments problem, so we shouldn't be getting any more of those

language goals for the rest of the semester

So, I've been a little disorganized with language learning this semester, but during the last couple weeks, I have been trying to develop some good strategies for learning language. I think it will be good to try to give myself some basic goals. I've really wanted to get back into learning Japanese for several reasons, so I might as well try to do it the hard way. Actually I think that learning the kanji will also help a lot with remembering chinese characters in general. All of the characters will be of the traditional variety because I strongly dislike simplified.

Uyghur / uyghur tili

- Each week learn between 50 and 100 new vocabulary words starting with the ones that I wrote in my notebook this summer (200-400 per month)
- I would like to focus on getting more verbs learned so I have less trouble with them. Since verbs are all conjugated exactly the same (without exception) it should be easy enough


Chinese / 中文

- Keep up with class, but retain characters from previous weeks by reviewing each one lesson set of vocab each day. New vocab is approximately 20-30 characters a week.
- Learn new vocab that Yen-Yi teaches me on Monday and chatting throughout the week.

Japanese / 日本語

- Learn the writing of approximately 100 Kanji per week (of the 2000 general use Kanji). Writing from the english meaning only. No readings yet. 20 per day
- After around 4-5 weeks, I will begin to learn to read / write sentences. I will try 10 per day and increase as time goes on.

the joy of money

So I just got myself a loan because I have been unable to pay tuition this fall. This is a result of many things--I lost my federal financial aid because only 3 of 11 credit hours only technically count towards my degree and because it took about 2 months to get a job once I returned in the country, I depleted a lot of my savings. But things are going okay; I just need to try to pay of this loan as quickly as possible.

I am hoping for next semester to find some sort of GTA / GRA position. I would prefer to be teaching in the AEC (Applied English Center), but I don't know how the prospects look on that. They aren't sure if they are hiring any more GTAs, and if they do, it is extremely competitive. I just need something. Or maybe this job (I am working as a temp employee right now) can become realized into an actual employee so I will get benefits.

It's a little overwhelming, but I think things will work out. Probably not how I expect them to, though

names

So last Friday, my friend Hilda invited a group of people from the international bible study over for dinner. It was wonderful to get together and eat delicious food that was a mixture of from a lot of places, but mainly Indonesia. So there is a recently married Taiwanese guy who is new this semester at KU. He is a Christian but just speaks very profoundly despite difficulties with language.

We asked what his English name was and he responded Ryan. We asked how he got the name. He said that he chose the name because of the movie Saving Private Ryan. To me, this sounds a little odd. He continued and said that in the movie there is a group of people whose goal it is to just save Ryan; they don't know him, but that is the main purpose they have. and at the end, they all die, but Ryan does survive. At the beginning and conclusion of the movie, Ryan is at the cemetary where those people are, and asks if his life was worthy of this kind of sacrifice. So he decided that this was a good name because he needs to remember that Jesus has done this for him. A reminder to ask if we are living worthily of what has been done for us. He said that his wife told him that he should pick a hero's name rather than someone who needed to be saved.

I think that is a good, name with humility. I really appreciate his thoughts when I have an opportunity to speak with him

學中文

Sorry for those of you that aren't interested in Chinese, but these are some of the things that I am learning. (please correct something if it's wrong)

所以你要把每一句記起來馬?
suo3yi3 ni3 yao4 ba3mei3 yi2 ju4 ji4qi3lai4 ma
Do you will remember everything?

To remember: 記起來 ji4 qi3 lai4

revelation

Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it. During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. "It's a ghost," they said, and cried out in fear. But Jesus immediately said to them: "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid." "Lord, if it's you," Peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water." "Come," he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!" Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?" And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God." --Matthew 14: 22-33


I think it's kind of funny that we carry around so many misunderstandings about the nature of Jesus and God. Especially in the case of the bible, reading is such a cross-cultural experience, things just don't make sense that much. Last night I was struck with the incident of Jesus walking on water for the first time this actually makes sense to me. I must admit I owe a lot of this to listening to Rob Bell. I have heard countless sermons on the subject. In fact one week at grinnell, I remember having to study the passage about 5 times in one week in different situations (bible study, church, worship, etc). There is of course the first question of why did Jesus decide to walk out to the boat in the middle of a storm anyways. The second question, which is more interesting to me at this point, is what would make Peter even think about going out on to the water. I think most of the traditional answers I've heard to these are kind of lacking. And the idea that Peter's doubt makes him sink. I mean, as it says, he was actually walking out on the water before he started sinking. He freaking got out of the boat in the first place, so maybe Jesus isn't rebuking him for doubt so much as expressing his ability to do so.

So it seems the main deficiency in my understanding is the nature of discipleship in Jewish culture. Of course, becoming a disciple of a rabbi was no small task. Only the best of the best ended up being accepted by a rabbi after following them around for a significant time. And they indeed did follow as closely as possible to try and do and be the same as their rabbi. If not accepted because the rabbi doesn't think that they can be like him, they of course would just go back to learning the family trade. The people who flunked out of the religious training were the ones that Jesus called to follow him. The calling of the disciples is very strange but not for the reason that seems apparent at first glance (the disciples leaving everything) but because Jesus is actually telling these fishermen, tax collectors that they can indeed be like him. You see later on the disciples being described as "unschooled" but others were amazed by that. The crazy thing that Jesus uses these "failures" to build up his church, he seems to believe that they can do it, and they do.

I guess if the disciples are disciples, they will try to stick as closely to Jesus as possible and try to do the things he does. I thinkhttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=998199667039975621# this could be part of Peter's motivation for even thinking of getting out of a boat in the middle of the storm. And Jesus' seeming rebuke of Peter may be less of "why are you such a screw up, doubter?" and more of "why don't you believe that you can do this? You can." That is a little more difficult for me to swallow, but it seems to me closer to the heart of what was going on there than what I have heard in the past.



Oh yeah, and of course the necessary Mutemath video:

hey everybody

I am sorry I haven't updated. I started working about 27 hours a week as well as taking 11 hours of classes (including chinese) so I am pretty slammed. Especially with International Friends stuff added on top of that. It's good; it really is, but it's so busy. I'm trying to keep up with correspondence but I am not quite caught back up. Lots of Uyhgur emails to write.

I have a new chinese name as of this semester--施嘉華. Now I have three names that I have to respond to. in uyhgur it's جۇرئەت (jur'at). Names are funny things.