Goal for the end of this semester:

Increase my Chinese vocabulary!

For my first Chinese Characters class, our teacher asked us 你认识多少生词（how many Chinese characters do you know). I have to admit that I sorta panicked. I was seriously about to say 100 characters. But then, when I listened to how many characters every other person in class said they knew.. it was like 700, 900, 1000... one person even said 2000 characters. "Umm.. for real? Shyet!!!" - that was what was running through my head. In the end, I decided to say 500 characters... although, really.. I am pretty sure I don't know as many as that. Then for our first class we had to take a test to see how many vocabulary words we know. I finished it in seriously, less than 10 minutes. Because I basically did not know 3/4 of the words on our test sheet. So I just sat there... waited and waited for someone to be the first to hand in their test sheet. I waited...and waited... and could not wait anymore and stare and my practically empty test sheet... so I decided to be brave and hand mine in before everyone else. Right after I did... people started standing up and handing theirs in too. haha. Everyone was also waiting for that one person to make the first move. I was actually that 'one person' for the first time!!

I had to give an on-the-spot presentation slash discussion in my Speaking class that day. It was pretty nerve-wrecking. I already get nervous talking in front of a class in English.. and now I actually had to do it in Chinese! So there I was babbling in front... about my on-the-spot given topic: 自行车　Bicycles! (Hui, I'm pretty sure bicycle isn't called 自行车 in Malaysia right?) So there I was in front, clasping and unclasping my clammy hands and desperately trying to find something interesting to talk about in Chinese about bicycles. It was awkward and slightly.. just slightly funny.
我不会骑自行车。应为我小的时候，我爸爸没教我骑自行车。 所以我到现在都还不会骑自行车。我的朋友常常要教我骑自行车，可是我觉得很不好意思。应为我现在已经很大了，如果别人看到我学骑自行车，他们一定笑我的。(I don't know how to ride a bicycle because my dad did not teach me how to ride one when I was young. That's why until now, I still don't know how to ride one. My friends keep wanting to teach me how to ride one but I'm too embarassed. If other people see me riding one, they will definitely laugh at me. )
That is basically what I said. Peppered with a whole bunch of "Umm"s and chin-scratching and a lot of “这么说。。？” questions. I should be able to say all that fluently. But I couldn't just because I was really nervous. Die. I should stop being nervous when talking in front of a crowd.

Something random: when a person is snoring, a slight tap or slight noise will be able to stop the person from snoring? haha, well at least it works for me. My roommate tested it out on me last night. And you know, now that we're in China... we sometimes dream in Chinese. For real. It's hilarious! My roommate talked in her sleep last week... she was ordering meat dumplings in her sleep. And I heard it all! "我要饺子。不要肉的。"（I want dumplings. With no meat)