"Name Yet to Be Determined"

I honestly have been telling myself to do this forever. I am finally not allowing myself to make excuses

Oh, hey! My name is Malik, and I am your very humble host for this section of.... *drumroll*...."Name Yet to Be Determined".  I think I like that title.

So where to start? Malik is the name, and studying is the game (honestly, first off; the cringe, and second, who am I kidding? I'm damn near twerking to Sweet Dreams - Eurythmics right now). I'm a high school junior (yes, this must be why I have so much energy), and apparently the first on this blog, so props to me. Yes, the humble is showing. I am a very proud non-Minnesotan. Such a sad day today is for me as a SoCal native.

THE FIRST SNOW OF THE SEASON!

The all-caps is definitely not stemming from excitement. I can safely say that snow is the bane of my existence, and if I met snow personified, it wouldn't be a crisp white anymore. That's for sure.

Okay, so now for the actual hobbies. I am a die-hard reader, and spend at least a couple hours a day engrossed in a book. Maybe an anecdote to properly get my message across; I just this month started to collect my own books, and I have already gotten upwards of 30 books. I apparently can whistle L.O.V.E. - Nat King Cole really well, cook some Chinese dishes 非常好 (extremely good), and if that didn't make it obvious, I am learning/have been learning Mandarin Chinese for 3 years (Arabic too). Maybe this a good segue (honestly didn't know segway was spelt like that until now either) …

I am thinking I’ll make this section about me and my story with the beautiful language of Chinese. So flashback to freshman year (soooooo long ago!).....

San Diego, California. The day all of us wet-behind-the-ears freshman came in to choose our classes.

Young Malik: *takes breath*

Counselor: Shut up. No, there aren’t anymore spots in Spanish. Move along now.

At least that is a pretty exaggerated but accurate portrayal of the encounter.

So now I was stuck in Chinese like all of the other rejects, but from the moment the teacher said “你好/hello,” I fell in love. No, not with her. So it turned out character memorization and pronunciation are two of my redeeming qualities. I burrowed my way through two years worth of Chinese that year. Then came the devastating news that changed my life forever; “We’re moving to Minnesota.” I didn’t even know where it was on the map (barely even do now, over a year later). Anyway, my new school had Chinese. Great, right? No, because the curriculum was abysmal and I learned very few new things. I had to teach myself: getting apps, watching Chinese TV series upon TV series, and only speaking Chinese to my similarly obsessed friend were some of the methods I deployed. Then I found out about something that made Minnesota not seem all so bad. PSEO is a thing.

So me now being totally obsessed counted down the days (not literally) until the day I could apply, and set my sights on the U, and the U only. I was positive I wasn’t going to get in, I made plans with my teacher to skip straight to Chinese 5 the next year, but I was miraculously accepted. You are probably expecting me to say “and I went to the U and lived happily ever after”, but no. Something much cooler happened before that.

I WENT TO CHINA THIS SUMMER!!!!!!!!!!!!

So when my Chinese teacher announced a trip to China she was chaperoning during the summer, I threw $4000 at it and packed my bags. Oh, the amazing cultural and language immersion I experienced….Maybe I’ll talk about that later, but for now let’s keep on topic. During the summer, I came to the U and the director of the Chinese language program gave me an informal test with a conversation in Chinese. She said that I am about ⅗ knowledgeable of Beginner’s Chinese, but that I shouldn’t skip the first semester and reaffirm my base knowledge. I agreed, of course, so here I am. The class is moving fast! I haven’t really learned much, but I know it was a good decision to not skip this semester. You have definitely got to be dedicated to succeed in the language courses here. It really helps you either find why you are trying so hard, or why you aren’t.

Honestly, in-class time definitely isn’t enough. I think I know what I’ll talk about next time ;)

P.S. Have you ever tried blasting 70-90’s music in your ear while also trying to concentrate on writing a blog post? No? Well it’s definitely difficult. It was all I could do to not stand up, sing along, and dance like a maniac right here in the Coffman computer lab.

Well...this seems like a good time to sign off :)

This was fun. Let's do it again sometime.

-Malik

Super random teahouse in the maze they call their central park in Chengdu, China.