Jan 1, 2006 1:05 PM Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! After days of threatening, the snow finally came down in a blizzard yesterday morning. By noon it was done and today the snow on the ground has all but disappeared.

Well, I just checked the worldclock on www.timeanddate.com and see they have just celebrated New Years in New York. Yesterday, I felt completely exhausted. I had just finished the last week of regular classes, and performed in a skit on Friday in front of an assembly of Chinese and foreign students, plus a full week of work. I slept through the night and finally had a chance to sleep in. My roommate is still sleeping after his all-nighter at the Congo Embassy. I hear there was a super party over there.

2005 was a big year for me. I took a record load for me of 18 credit hours in the spring semester, including Buddhist Texts in Translation, learning to build websites in a computer science course, reading my first full length Japanese novel in Advanced Japanese, a Chinese cultural history class, plus a Japanese pop culture and 3rd Year Chinese course. Dad and I went on a nice trip to Zion National Park during Spring Break. On top of that, lots of practice and preparation for the College Racquetball Championships hosted by ASU.After final exams I applied for Graduation and flew to Grandma and Grandpa's house for a week in May. After returning to Arizona I packed and moved everything to Mom's house. A few days later I boarded the plane for China. After the initial 6 week intensive Chinese courses and weekly events around Beijing, I went on an intensive 3 week whirlwind tour around China. I went to Datong, Pingyao, Taiyuan, Xi-An, Zhengzhou, Kaifeng, Louyang, Nanjing, Shanghai, and finally flew to Hong Kong for a three day stay. From Hong Kong I flew to Taiwan to see Lily and her family. I traveled and saw lots of neat things around Taiwan, endured two Typhoons, and flew back to Beijing in mid August. I got a job teaching English in Beijing, enrolled in Renmin for the Fall and have been studying Chinese and working for the past 4 months.

I have saved enough to pay for another semester at Renmin and plan to cut back my work hours from 18 to about 10 a week to stay focused on study. I plan on applying for full-tuition scholarships offered by the Chinese government that many of my classmates have received.

The Japanese company that offered me a job surprised me the other day. They told me that they were very interested in me and wanted me to fly to Aichi Prefecture in Japan for a final interview with their top managers. They would pay all my expenses. The big surprise was that they also noted that they would want me to work the first three years at their new North American base of operations in Detroit Michigan. If they would have said Honolulu Hawaii, I may not have blinked, but though it would be relatively close to Grandma and Grandpa, I did not want to live in Detroit for the next three years. So I bluntly told them I was not interested. I was flattered when they replied with a long letter trying to change my mind, but I replied with another not interested. I was already not too interested in their products (car parts), to have to live in Detroit on top of it was too much to bear. The good news is that it looks like I have some marketable skills.

I still have dreams of running my own business and I am happy here learning Chinese for now.