So I just got word that one of my American female friends in Xinjiang got robbed yesterday. I'm not aware of the details at all, but I would venture it would be some kind of physical assault, but I imagine she is pretty shaken up. Please join me in praying for her. I think she's had a rough time so far, and this won't make it any easier for her. It saddens me to hear this, and I hope that she can recover and return to a life with hope and not constant fear and distrust of those around her. May the Lord strengthen her and give her the support she needs.
In happier news, I had a few friends over for dinner on Saturday. I made some kind of fancy stuffed italian pasta that looked like ghosts with sausage and cheese, boiled cabbage and ponzu. We had chocolate lava cakes for dessert, which were good, but more expensive than worthwhile in my opinion. But just hanging out with Zarina, Alexandra and Sawako was a huge blessing. We got to talk for about 4 hours and just relax. Having people over to my apartment was good; it didn't feel so lonely as usual. Earlier on Saturday, I had bubble tea with Zarina, and I asked her advice for some things that have been going on with me lately. She's got a definite grip on maturity, and I truly respect her a lot.
My parents came out yesterday. We hung out a little bit. Went to the bookstore where I bought Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail (special edition) for about $5 with my coupon, and some chinese novel (in traditional characters) for $3. I know I can't read about any of it, but I will try to make it through a couple sentences. After the bookstore, we went and had dinner at the Mediterranean Cafe here in town. I love that place. I think it's a Lebaneese store, and I haven't really spoken with the owner much, but he is helpful to recommend things to buy (it is also a grocery of sorts). But the food is delicious. It was really a blessing to be around my parents because this semester hasn't provided much time to go home. I am really glad that they came out. We are going to Florida for Thanksgiving to hang out with Jessica. We'll have fun. I am excited.
So, language check.
Chinese: Since our class schedule was back to normal this week, I got the characters well memorized Sunday night rather than trying to do it at work on Monday. That is an immense help. I've made it through the first several chapters of Cracking the Chinese Puzzles, and added the vocab into my flashcard program today. Now I know words that are crazy useful, like 色溫 (se4wen1) meaning `color temperature' as in photography. It's kind of funny the things that stick in your mind. I want to set a more specific goal for Chinese. This goes in conjunction with my Japanese goals, but I would like to have learned 1000 Chinese characters by the start of classes this January.
Uyghur: Well, I got my midterm turned in. That helps my overall stress level. My goal with uyghur now, rather than memorizing words per day, is to review sentences I have read. I talked with my teacher about this, and she is providing me with sentences that use new vocabulary words in context (so far 2.5 pages of sentences!). But I'm not organized to be actually going through them yet. The main problem is that I was wanting to do this in the arabic script but my flashcard software does not allow for this. So I have to go for the latin script. I just need to bite my tongue and do it. once I get into a pattern daily, it will be better.
On an unrelated note, I was bored the other day and started gathering uyghur texts online to see what the most common words in Uyghur are. My two sources are RFA and biliwal, so the content is a little skewed, but oh well. Both the programs that I was using now are not working because today I decided to upgrade my computer to Leopard, which is sweet (aside from making only those two programs not work). But it looks like the most common words are along the lines of 've' - and; 'bilen' - with; 'bu' - this. I will try to get some actual counts up sometime this week, once I have a working solution--instead of my memory.
Japanese: Got a new plan here aside from the Kanji learning--because I'm not really learning any japanese. I purchased the Assimil Japanese with Ease Vol 1 from buy.com this week. I have heard a lot about the Assimil method and I want to give it a test to see how well it works. If I can spent about 15 minutes a day on it, I should be okay. Once I receive it in the mail, I will be able to understand exactly how it works. I would like to make it through it in the next 3 months if possible. I don't know if it is, but I can try, if I don't overwork myself.
Please remember my friend Amy in Xinjiang as she is healing from the robbing.
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