January feelings

Urghh college takes forever! Why am I still living in Pullman?!
Ok, I have been doing a really good job of having a spectacular attitude about being here, and for the most part I do love Pullman.  I like my job, life, house, and friends.  I think that I most get antsy to leave when it comes to being gay in this po-dunk part of the state.  I can dig country life, but en général gays do not thrive in more conservative, rural areas.  The pickens around here are reeeeeal slim.  Then I have gay friends living in downtown Seattle who have decidedly enviable lives compared with my situation here in the Palouse.  Fortunately I'm only 22 (yikes! 23 soon!), but I'm starting to get little reminders more and more frequently that I'm burning up some of my prime years here doing nothing.  I'm going to be 24-years-old before I move out of Pullman ; /  24!!!!

Ok ok ok, Ky, take it easy.  You're here because you have a job here, at which you're the most senior staff member and have everything pretty easy.  In December, you're getting your Bachelors degree.  Then you get to just work fulltime with no school, which will be sweet and a lot easier to save up money & pay things debts off.  When you do turn 24 and move away from Pullman, you're moving to Beijing, China.. Hello! Way better than Seattle! You want a big city? That's the biggest one I can think of.  Man, it's going to be an incredible contrast with my current way of life here.

A little more positivity - I'm really digging taking all upper level classes within my major.  This is the first semester that's really happened for me.  I'm taking 4th semester Chinese and 6th semester Chinese at the same time, which is actually a little bit painful.  However, I think I'm definitely going to stick it out.  I really like both professors, and at the end of the day, I get 2 back-to-back hours of Chinese 3 days per week (actually I have 4th semester Chinese 4 days/week).
All of the other classes are related to analyzing China: past, present, and future.  It's beautiful because I'm not just sitting in a boring lecture.  It's all very involved, and we are expected to come up with content ourselves.  The downside is that I have about 500 group presentations this semester, but those are more inconvenient than difficult.  As a result of these higher expectations of the students, I love finding that my peers actually (well, sometimes) know what they're talking about! As much as I'm looking forward to being done with college, I do love being a scholar.

I'll leave you with some food for thought:
How much money would you save if alcohol didn't exist?