Tomorrow I am running in the conference track meet. This Thursday night, my coach called me and told me that I was not going to run the 1500 meter, as expected, but the mile run in the distance medley relay. This may sound like not a big difference, but the problem is, the people who run the DMR (as it's called) are fast. Like, top in conference fast. Needless to say, I am not one of those people. Our DMR team let's just say, will not be out for a gold. More than that, there is a potential for humiliation, because as the last leg of the relay (1200-400-800-1600, respectively) I may very possibly be running all by myself, and not because we're ahead. On the other hand, I am excited to actually run a mile. I haven't run a (timed) mile since freshman year in highschool, when I ran a 6:48 (which to a college runner, is extremely slow). To get my current time, I always have to take my 1500 time and add about 20 seconds, which is accurate but feels slightly like cheating. But after tomorrow, no more.
Speaking of humiliation though, I have already put myself through the ringer this semester. I suggested that for Chinese New Year, we should reserve the Swarthmore karaoke machine. In the meantime, my friends were in charge of writing up our class skit, and unbeknownst to me, decided, since I was so big on karaoke, to make me sing a solo. The skit was a variety show, where celebraties go on the show and perform things they aren't that good at. I dressed very goofily and sang a cheesy popsong. After me however, this girl played an amazing violin solo, and then another girl performed a Chinese flag dance. I felt like the person who makes that inappropriate toast at a wedding. Since then, these people I don't know have been coming up to me and asking me if I was the girl who sang at Chinese New Year.   ¶ 6:54 PM

  So, after a long hiatus, I am starting up again, with no guarantees that this will even be remotely as interesting as my life in China.
I am working as a Writing Mentor this semester, which means that I work one-on-one over the course of the semester with a student who wants to improve his/her writing. My student turns out to have graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1995, gone to grad school in Japan and joined the Japanese foreign service, who sent him to, among all other places, Swarthmore to improve his English. He is a senior poli sci major, and next year will be stationed as a diplomat in possibly Vietnam, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, or Israel. It's amazing all the people in my school who I hadn't met before.
We had a really long and interesting conversation at lunch, and among other things, he told me that Japan was facing a huge population shortage, that couldn't be remedied by immigration, because, as he said, it would lead to a rise in gangsters, and not like Japanese gangsters, who hold to their own code of chivalry, but more like Chinese gangsters, who are utterly ruthless. It was a viewpoint I had never heard articulated before.
Mea culpa: I met with my Palestinian anthropology teacher. She asked me how I was, and I said: "good" she said, "are you good or are you fine?" and this from a non-native English speaker. Though I guess adverbs are pretty much extinct among native English speakers, and only those who speak hyper perfect English (like my teacher) still use them.  ¶ 10:53 PM