sick; Chinese class

Home sick today.

July was sick most of last week and I made the mistake of thinking to myself that I'd finally whipped my immune system into shape and was feeling fine. I had this theory a few years ago that as long as I exercised regularly, ate decent meals and got a reasonable amount of sleep, I'd stay healthy. I'm not sure why I believed it, since I still seem to get sick although perhaps not as badly as that one year when I was working all the time and never left the house or office.

Anyway, that was last Friday morning on the drive to work. Friday night, I had a little headache. I was in denial most of Saturday, but skipped playing hoops in the morning because I dreamt that I got to basketball 2 hours early and got tired and then sick while waiting for people to show up. Yeah, that wasn't a good sign. Made it through the day just feeling a bit under the weather but pretty much gave up Saturday night after we got home from a birthday celebration.

So much for getting a workout in while the weather warmed up. It looks like it's gonna be single digits again by Wednesday. *sigh*

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Sunday's words: zênmeyàng ("Is that OK?" a common expression), xièxie (thank you)
Today's words: xîhuan (to like), háishi (or), kêshì (but)

A little bit of Conjunction Junction today.

I have to say, I knew "xièxie" before, but part of this exercise is learning how to write it as well. Speaking of which, I finally signed up for classes at the Boston Language Institute. I wasn't sure what I was going to do because it seemed like the level 1 class was going to bore me, but since my speaking is so close to nonexistent, I was worried that I'd be in over my head in the level 2 class. I talked to Mom yesterday and she suggested I try the level 2 class and just switch down if I decided that it was too much for me. Duh. Sometimes it takes a little help to see the simple solution sitting in front of you.

So I called up BLI today and I'm now signed up for the 8 week session starting in February. The accelerated classes that start next week apparently didn't look like they would have enough students to be held. Hmmm, go figure. It probably works out for the best since it'll give me another few weeks to master (heh, right, master) the basics and see if the language exchange thing will work out. The only downside is that they only teach using the simplified characters. I guess this is the norm rather than the exception, but unfortunately, I've been studying the traditional characters so that I might have a chance of reading older texts that my parents have. Which really only means more work.