...Months Later

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Well, I suppose I should begin by apologizing and thanking those who encouraged me to continue blogging. So thanks to Mom and Tucker, I am gonna give it another go. I hope you continue to read, I am gonna give one or two updates a month.

As many know, I spent the intervening months since my last post and now taking care of law school applications. I fell into a nice groove studying for the LSATs. Since I only work 25 hours/week, it left plenty of time to study, exercise, and ensure my mental health leading up to the test day. Pretty phenomenal how one test can determine so much. Five points on the test can mean the difference between a top 50 law shool and a top 5. I scored a 169 to those who care, giving me a small chance at top 5 schools, a decent shot at at top 10 and a pretty good shot at a top 14 (yeah top 14 is a much bigger deal than top 15). Of course, if I get a good scholarship to CU or DU, that trumps all else 😊

Enough about that. The holiday season here was nice, certainly not home, but nice. I was surprised to find how aware the Chinese were of Christmas. It felt like was the case that a quarter of stores had Christmas decorations. Of course, they all had the exact same santa poster... thousands of stores with that same poster all over the city.

The students studying English at my (about 700 out of 7,000 the campus has) school put on a Christmas show. It was pretty fun watching the students sign, Wham's "Last Christmas," until it was the seventh class performing it. Apparently every high school class wanted to perform the love song, so they kept to it to a select seven. Great skits though on the nutcracker, songs of silent night among many. I was a little befuddled over their skit on the story of nativity. They seemed to miss exactly what the miracle was, so instead they were creating and making up many miracles along the way.

Of course the holiday food with the foreign community was great. Just like thanksgiving, everyone here pulls out all the stops to make it feel like home. The table for both occassion were stuffed with western food to curb our homesickness. I missed you all, will be happy to be home this summer!

Well, I will leave it at that for now. Next time I am on here I will tell you about my trip to Thailand (I leave February 1st) and my second semester (I begin teaching Calculus and Statistics after vacation).

Happy 2013

Brian



P.S. My new years resolution is to start studying Chinese again... I had to take a break during my LSAT studies. So, if you are chatting with me, ask me about it. I need someone to keep me accountable 😊

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Photos

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The Chinese showed their respect for their ancestors by burning cash for this fall holiday.

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Cupping Massage. It helps gets rid of toxins from the body if you are sick. Also great to die your skin polka dots!

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Wasn't going out much when studying... Was able to grow my beard without criticism :)

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Christmas Dinner :) Thanks Raleen Toledo!