flickerfish

I’ve advanced in my Chinese studies to a point where most people would call me passably fluent, at least in terms of high school fluency, but for some reason I’ve never read an entire book in Chinese. I’ve read children’s books, of course, but that barely counts. I’ve read short stories – Ba Jin, Wang Meng, Bing Xin… but I haven’t read a full BOOK.

I’m going to ease myself into this goal slowly by beginning with a young adult book – a translation of Astrid Lindgren’s The Brothers Lionheart (or something like that, I’m translating from the Chinese translation). I just finished the first page with only one blip (a relatively uncommon word for ghast/ghoul), so I think I’ll breeze through this pretty easily. That’ll be a nice warm-up. After that, I’ll probably read Ba Jin’s Family, or whatever it’s called, and then I’m going to read some classical works (my mom teaches classical chinese literature so I’ll have her help me get the hang of the cadence and structure of it).

I’m going to mark this goal as “give up,” because I hate clutter on my 43things list, but really I will be working towards it.

initially i was going to read a book every day, or MAYBE every two days if i needed break, during summer vacation of course, but my attention span turns out to be way too short for that – i can’t even read for an hour straight!

i did finish animal dreams this week and i’m about 100 pages from finishing on beauty, so i’ll probably update this entry when i do. i got a copy of madness and civilization at an used bookstore, and i salvaged a truckload of books from the sundry corners of my house, so i have lots of reading material for the months to come. oh, and i’m going to the library soon to borrow one hundred years of solitude and oryx and crake.

it’s summer vacay and i don’t know what to do with myself! i’m about a quarter of the way through toni morrison’s jazz (which i actually don’t like that much) and i have an amazing plan to send one of my favorite teachers postcards every single day and another favorite teacher postcards very frequently as well etc, but apart from that, i really have NO IDEA what i’m going to do this summer.

i want to take some cooking classes, some dance classes, and some cello classes. i want to get a headstart on my applications, go to taiwan (this one at least is definite), and learn arabic and spanish. i want to draw beautiful things and write short stories and poetry and maybe even a novel and long, glorious letters to all my friends. as a literary editor of my school’s art magazine, i’m obligated to write lovely letters to all the other members of our crew, so there are at least some people who will enjoy my lovely writing! knowing how bad i am at the pen pal thing, they will probably be the ONLY people enjoying my letters, but you know, it’s all good.

yesterday all i wanted to do was sleep and go to flea markets, so at least this list is an improvement. but i still can’t believe i have no structure to my summer.

yesterday my mom brought up the idea of volunteering with this group of adopted chinese kids who basically are brought together by their adoptive parents every week and pressed to learn chinese and enjoy chinese culture. since i am half/half, i am perfectly situated to bridge the gap between asian heritage and western upbringing, or something like that. so i might go help out with their chinese classes etc, because i love little kids, and maybe i can even convince some to take care of my fish while i’m gone.