To all of my friends & family ~ 恭喜發財 Gung1 Hei2 Faat3 Coi4 Congratulation$ & Be Prosperous
♪ ヾ(￣ー￣)メ(^_ ^)ゞ x ♥ X ♡ I WISH YOU A HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR*~
新年快樂 [01.23.12]

It is year of the dragon ! (: Bye-Bye year of the rabbit. You were quite cruel to me. ..aren’t you suppose to be my lucky year? Maybe I am not a good rabbit. ) =
I wonder if this year will be better. It seems harder.

To My one and only,

One year has passed. ..& I still think of you. I do not love you the same anymore, but I love you much more than I ever did.

To YOU:
I hope you don’t forget the days that we spent together. Remember how much I loved you.
I hope you don’t forget the days we spent apart. That was when I loved you the most.

I do not think I can stop thinking about you. ..ever. I will not forget the good and bad times. I will always remember you and our time. I hope you feel the same way. Everyday that I miss you. ..will just be another reminder that I need to continue on so that maybe one day I can see you again. Even if we can only be friends, I do not want any less. I only want to see your smile and feel your embrace.

I will not ask why things ended up the way they did. All I care about is you. I hope I will make you proud someday. I will learn Cantonese. I will learn Mandarin. I will visit San Francisco. I will visit Hong Kong. I will keep going. ..so you will always know that somewhere out there, there is always someone thinking of you. No one will love you more than I do. Don’t be sad & take care.
110387 <3 061685

I want to tell you. ..Happy New Year. (=

your one and only,
<3
Strawberry

Mobile pics of me on the first day of school today.
My face is yellow……+ purple jacket? Must be the husky blood in me! hehe <3

happy face for chinese class? xD

:3

My classes this quarter are listed under the ” Life@School ” page. They are all very interesting, but seems difficult at the same time. My entrepreneur class has a lot of field work and I have to choose whether to work from scratch on creating my own small business or to work closely with a local small business. All of which is scary to me!!!!

I’m going back to learn my basics in Mandarin Chinese by taking the first year course this quarter for Non-Heritage. loL… I had to stress that -_- ! Hopefully this time around I will understand how to formulate a sentence and understand sentence structure more. That will help me a lot when doing my homework and trying to speak!

The Chinese textbook/workbook/audio we’re using this quarter is:
Integrated Chinese: Level 1, Part 1 (Simplified Character) Textbook (Chinese Edition) by Tao-Chung Yao
other books:
Remembering Simplified Hanzi: Book 1, How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese Characters by James W. Heisig and Timothy W. Richardson

I’ll be busy aside from finding time for the gym and gaming a few hours at night. I think I will also purchase a Master Grade – Gundam Unicorn model to build since I love building the first Gundam Model that I got as a gift.
WISH ME LUCK!! (=

bayB StrawberRY

I’ll post more later tonight. .. ~^.^ <3

We just started the first day of class today. I learned the simple finals, initials, and how to pronounce the four tones. We did many drills and overall I enjoy the class since it’s only a size of 10. That’s 1 teacher for 3 students. I love it.

Today, I also learned how to spell my Chinese name correctly in Simplified form. .. 孟小雪 Mèng Xiǎo Xuě

I will update more later (: zzz I have Chinese class in  6hrs > . < *sigh it’s 5 days a week 8:30am – 1:00p !

Last night, I got in about 30minutes of Cantonese practice!! It was with a Skype language exchange buddy, Eason. He’s from Guongzhou. He was teaching me common phrases through typing and voice chat.  We typed informally, but understood eachother pretty well. Since he’s an Econ major and I’m an Accounting/Law&Policy major/minor & basically just a business student overall, we had much to talk about, especially the comparison between China’s way of business vs. that in the U.S. Other than that, this was what I learned from Eason last night.

[Informal lesson 1 _ 05/01/11]

My family has 6 people. // Ngoh okay yao lok go ren.

My dad, my mom, 3 older brother. // Ngoh baba, mama, sahm go gor gor

I am the youngest one. // Ngoh hai mei gok yahn.

How much is it? // Gei dou cheen yaht gkum?

Why this?! // Diem guy ah?

Who are you? // Lei hai Been gol ah

Which one? // Been yo wai ah

Can someone help me correct the romanization and any other errors that will help me learn it properly? I’m so glad that I heard the pronunciation to these phrases and had a chance to practice saying it back by imitation. ^_^V Thank You Eason!

Also, Eason suggested the site italki.com to find more language exchange friends. I registered right away and made a few Skype and MSN language exchange partners. So, far it was a success. I’m glad to say that I actually met one from Hong Kong who currently resides in the states! This will be interesting and pleasant since we live in the same time zone.  As for the other girls and guys that I’ve met, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem as I stay up late to study for school anyways and it is usually China’s day time when it is my time zone’s night time.

From this introduction session last night, one of the language exchange buddy, Wai Ki, made a short voice clip for me saying, “Lei Ho Ma.” Today, I will put that on my ipod and keep listening to it, imitating, and practicing, until I can pronounce it right comfortably. Thanks  Wai Ki (:

Anyways, this is the only nice and sunny day in my area today. It’s rare and so I will go enjoy the sunshine before I continue to study for midterms for my Statistics and Law & Policy class. ] :

ByeBye!! Thanks everyone for their help. It was nice meeting you all.

bayB StrawBerry

Wow, it’s been awhile since I’ve updated.  I think that I’ve been caught up trying to raise my grades in school.  It’s going well this quarter! I’ve made some good friends, but still not a lot. .. ]: I haven’t made any Chinese friends yet *sigh* I wonder where they’re all at? loL. .. <3

I just took my survey for an add-code to take Chinese 101,102, & 103 courses this summer at UW-Seattle.  I hope they reply soon so that I can register.  It is not Cantonese (& yes I’m sad), but I heard that it’s okay to learn Mandarin because then I can learn the writing system.  I have a feeling a lot of it will be simplified characters? I’m not sure how it’s taught at the University level, but I’ll try to learn Traditional characters on my own if the teacher doesn’t emphasize on it. I heard that’s how Cantonese read Chinese characters?

Overall, learning Cantonese has been a SLOW PROCESS._ .;; I haven’t found anything effective yet. ..I’m reading other bloggers sites related to Canton stuff that I see through MakMak’s link pages !! That will keep me busy for a little..

Does anybody know any good links to learn Cantonese beside Sheik and a suggestion on how to record myself so that I can upload it to my blog for others to hear and comment on so that I can improve? Thanks !

ENJOY YOUR SPRING TIME & SMILE <3 !

bayB StrawBerry