God said, 'I sent you a radio report, a helicopter, and a guy in a rowboat. What the hell are you doing here?'

It's been another relatively quiet week so far. Work, yoga, movies, and books, mostly.

08/08

I met Qin Yang, a girl I'd been talking with online, for a language exchange session. I'd never done the whole language exchange thing, but I thought it might be a good way to meet people and to practice some Chinese.

She lives way out on the Batong light rail line, and it took about an hour to get there from my office. That might be annoying to do on a regular basis, but this was my first time in the area. It's sort of the suburbs. There are still huge apartment complexes and it feels urban, there's just maybe more green and definitely more mosquitos.

We wandered around the campus of her college a bit. It's a gated area, maybe a quarter of the size of MIT, but complete with its own shopping and restaurants. Despite the fact that the college is on summer vacation right now there were a lot of students studying in the classrooms we walked by, so we ended up sitting in a pagoda/gazebo thing and chatting there. We read articles from magazines, mostly. I happened to have an Economist from the office and she brought a sort of Chinese Newsweek magazine. Her English is substantially better than my Chinese, and I struggled through my reading whereas it didn't take her very long to figure out the article she looked at. After the reading we chatted some and got dinner, switching between English and Chinese pretty freely.

I guess it was a good experience; I certainly had fun. I just don't know whether this is an efficient way to learn a language. I suppose it's better than what I've been doing.

Fan Xie (my apartment mate) reminded me of an invitation to go to the beach with him and some of his friends this weekend. I hesitated. I'm not big on beaches, and I always worry about spending money. Then I realized that I was being silly, and that it'd be stupid to pass up an opportunity to hang out and get some real Chinese practice in. It seems like work, though, and it was tempting to sit around and read or watch movies and not exert myself to study Chinese. I almost did it this weekend.

I spend a lot of my time here tired. I think it's partly heat, partly pollution, partly sitting at a computer all day, and partly having to think to do things like buy lunch. I just need to commit to suffering through some more learning and it'll get easier, I'm sure.

Fan Xie had told me earlier that a friend of his was staying at the apartment for a while, and as part of the discussion of who was coming on the beach trip he mentioned that his boyfriend would be there. "Oh, by the way, I'm gay." It was funny how off-hand it was. I guess he told me because it was that or hide the fact that they were sleeping together. Whatever. Doesn't bother me, of course, and I'd sort of guessed, but it was a funny exchange.