25

I'm now 25 years old, which is a milestone that warrants some reflection as I'm no longer in my early 20s, I'm much closer to 30 than my teenage years, and have already lived a full quarter of a century.

This semester I've been taking graduate level courses in Chinese and education. My teachers last semester suggested that I apply for a scholarship and in the middle of the school year it was not possible to apply for the undergraduate Chinese language program. I had completed year two and was going to go on to year three of the language classes. There were ten spots available for spring enrollment in a relatively new program - a master's in teaching Chinese as a foreign language. The classes are more challenging than the language classes I was in before because they're lectures and involve a some independent reading, writing, presentations and projects. My classmates all have very good levels of Chinese so it's pushing me to work harder and keep up. As a teacher, I also find the classes quite useful because our courses cover education related topics such as pedagogy, second language acquisition, and cross-cultural communication. There are no universities that I know of in China that offer an MA in TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages), so an MA in teaching Chinese to speakers of other languages is an adequate substitute, not to mention that everything is conducted in Chinese and with a scholarship it's free and includes a small monthly stipend on the side. My classmates are pretty diverse, coming Eastern Europe (Poland, Russia and the Ukraine), South Asia (Sri Lanka), central Asia (Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan) and Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia). There is one other American and we are the only students who's home country is in the western hemisphere and we're the only native English speakers.

In recent weeks I've been busy with my old job teaching little kids, though I've cut down my hours and now have started tutoring high school students at Nanjing Normal University through a training center that helps prepare students to study abroad. I will become more involved there this summer when I have more time and when summer classes will be organized for SAT and TOEFL exam preparation. There may also be AP classes depending on what AP subjects students plan to take the exams for.

We had midterm exams in late April and now I'm working on a project and two papers due at the end of the semester in June.

It's really warm and so far pretty dry. It is not uncommon to have temperatures in the 80s during the day and in the 70s at night now. June is the wettest month of the year, when it rains nearly every evening, so I'm waiting for the regular rainstorms to come soon.