7.9 earthquake in China yesterday!!!!!! That is some crazy stuff. I hope mother nature doesn't lash out on us when we go abroad. Of course, that's a selfish thing to say because people there have to suffer the consequences of mother nature all the time... but I really hope nothing bad happens while we're there (kidnappings, murders, severe food poisonings, crazy tsunamis all constitute "bad"). I read in the Mercury today that a 7.9 earthquake has a strength that's 100 fold of a 6.0 (or something like that... I don't quite recall).
Today, Laverne and I went to get our courses abroad approved from SCU. We ran around the school, getting different professors sign off on the classes we're taking abroad. IES only offers 5 classes to its students, and most of us are going to take 4... so all the IES kiddies will probably be in the same class. This is what I'm taking:
The Chinese Metropolis: Shanghai in Comparative Perspective
Chinese language class (Intermediate? Advanced? I don't know how hardcore this is going to be)
The Political Economy of China
Religion in Chinese Society
The other class I'm not taking is Marketing to the Chinese. If the other classes get filled up, then I'll probably have to take this one, but so far, that's what my courses look like!
I took a look at the other IES students going, and researched their universities. It seems like mostly every who is going to Shanghai are from well known liberal arts schools. Then, you've got me and Laverne... two students from a school in the Silicon Valley that's known for its business program. I hope that's not weird.
So. Transferring credit is going to be fun. Since Fudan is on a semester system and SCU is a quarter system, we get 1.5 times the amount of one semester system credit. I'm taking 15 semester units... while is the equivalent of 22.5 quarter units. At SCU, a regular quarter load is 16 units. 22.5 is like adding two more classes on to a full load. I hope I'll be able to survive the workload....
Other than academics, I'm really looking forward to a week in Taiwan. We're having this field trip to Taipei to see how the city works, and I hope it's not something where we all have to tour the city with the school. I want to go off on my own for a week and hang out with my familyy! My mom's in Taiwan right now for my Grandpa's one year memorial. I wish I could have gone. But, then I think about the horrible series of events I went through exactly one year ago just to get to my Grandpa's funeral, and I want to scream. Hmm... let's see if I can recall:
My Grandpa had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's about four or five years ago. Since then, my mom had always tried to get at least one trip a year out to Taiwan to see him, but it was hard because she only had limited vacation days. Anyway, last year, on top of Alzheimer's, he had been diagnosed with some type of throat cancer. He didn't have much time to live. So, my mom made an emergency trip to Taiwan to see him, and my brother went as well. I couldn't leave because I had to be in school and I had to look after my aunt who was going through surgeries to remove her breast cancer. Around that time, my neighbor had side swiped my car, and I didn't have my own car for about two weeks. During the time my mom and my brother was gone, I took my mom's car out and some idiot also side swiped her car, but drove off before I could catch them.
Needless to say, I was pretty upset. But, eventually, I got everything fixed. My mom came home a week later, and about a week or two after she got home, my Grandpa passed. We immediately booked tickets back to Taiwan (mind you, this was during my finals week) for one week. The day finally came for us to leave, and when we got to the airport, we find out my passport had expired a couple of months before. My mom was so busy with funeral arrangements and other things that she hadn't even considered my passport. Of course, she was upset, but what could she do? So my brother and my mom left to Taiwan without me. My brother's friend picks me up from the airport, and we try to get to the passport agency in SF to get an emergency passport of some kind. When we got there, not only had the stupid agency moved to a different building, but they were closed (it was 4:30 on a Friday afternoon, and the following Monday was a government holiday). The whole weekend, I was on the phone with the passport people in DC, and made friends with operator 17 ('cause I'd called so many times). On Tuesday, my aunt took me to the SF passport agency, and we got in a LOOOOOOOONG line and waited a LOOOOOOOOOONG time to try and get a new passport (at this time, I was still unsure of whether I'd get a passport or not). In the middle of the day, I was so upset, thinking I wouldn't get my passport that I just wanted to cry. Good thing I got it. Even though I waited in line for over 8 hours, I finally had my passport and left that night (we had to cancel two plane tickets because I didn't get my passport in time). Even when I was at the airport and on the plane, I had no time to relax. I had a huge project due for my religion class, and I was rushing to finish that. I had some other finals to study for, it was just a big mess.
I made it in time for my Grandpa's funeral, and even though it was a horrible, sad day, I was glad I'd made it. I'm glad I'd gone through all of that just to say goodbye to him. I still remember seeing him lying there, so peacefully. He'd lost so much weight since the last time I saw him, I almost didn't recognize him. The whole time I was looking at him, I imagined him sitting up and smiling with his sweet smile, saying to all of us, "Why are you idiots crying?!" Haha...
Well, that was my little snippet down memory lane. I totally forgot the topic I'd talked about at first, but I'm going to leave it at this...
