flickerfish

well, i’ve gotten to step one – get a hu qin… i’m picking it up over spring break and we’ll see where to go from there. i’m excited! the only thing i’m worried about is i don’t know whether i’ll be able to procure a teacher here, so i’ll have to self-study, and that might take more energy than i can devote. so we’ll see.

initially i was going to read a book every day, or MAYBE every two days if i needed a break (this 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 both animal dreams and on beauty this week, so i didn’t TOTALLY fail at my original goal. i also 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, and i just bought atwood’s oryx and crake at this lovely bookstore i found, so i have lots of reading material for the months to come. finally, i’m undertaking the project of translating kate chopin’s the awakening line by line into chinese over the summer for the benefit of mi madre. so far i’m about 40 pages in!

6/10 – just finished the best american short stories of 1989, which is, coincidentally, anthologized by margaret atwood.

6/13 – finished oryx and crake, um, two days ago? yesterday? i’m not sure. at some point this week, anyway. just finished one hundred years of solitude today.

6/17 – mood all over the place, stopped reading, picking it back up again gradually.

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.