Wow, even though I am close to coming home for winter semester, it sure has not felt that way. I have been so busy writing papers for finals in China, and preparing for my classes in America that I haven’t even had time to think of just how close I am to coming home. It seems that I won’t have time to rest for a while yet. I jump straight into classes in America, then I will jump straight back to China for an internship, and upon my return immediately start graduate school. CRAZY!!! I know it will work out, but a little break would be nice :)
On Sunday I had the opportunity to teach Sunday School. I sure wish I hadn’t forgotten about the lesson until sacrament meeting. Thanks to the Lord the lesson still went rather well. People were mostly willing to contribute which certainly helped.
Monday was interesting, it was my first day of finals in China. We originally were supposed to have class that day, but only ended up having one of the classes we were supposed to attend. I also began writing one of my final papers. I was able to finish most of it that day, but I did stay up a little too late that night, a habit that continued through most of this last week.
On Tuesday I finished up the paper that I had started the day before. For dinner I went and ate Indian food with Drew. It was rather good, but not as good as the Indian food that I had while in Seattle. I really do want to live in that city someday, such a great place, but I digress…
Wednesday say me having class again, something that I am not a big fan of during finals week. I woke up extra early thinking that class was at 10, only to find out it wasn’t until 2. Oh well, a little less sleep can’t kill me. Class itself wasn’t that bad. I finished up the slides for one of my presentations that night.
On Thursday I had the first part of one of my finals. I gave a presentation on public key encryption. Overall I was very happy with how the presentation went. I could have done better, but that is how I normally feel after a presentation.
Thursday was Drew’s birthday, but since we were all so busy with our finals we were not able to do anything during the day. Too bad too, I was really looking forward to some good old karaoke. Instead we all went out for dinner to a really good Xinjiang resturant. The food was good and the company was better.
After dinner we all went back to the couples’ mansion and there watched “Despicable Me”. Well most of us did at least, a bunch of the boys just played music in the back. I really enjoyed the movie, but I couldn’t give it my full attention, because at the same time as watching I was preparing for my CS final the next day.
This was the final that I was the most worried about. There has been so much material that we covered during this semester that I couldn’t see how I could prepare for all of it. I did end up getting through all 1500 or so slides in my review.
Luckily the test, which was at 9am Friday morning, wasn’t nearly as bad as I was worried. It was all on topics the teacher had spent a bit of time talking about on class, so I think I was able to answer correctly overall. Afterwards I realized how I could have prepared better, but it is always easy to see what you should have done after a test.
After finishing my final I came home and updated my CS paper. I realized that when I wrote it I had written up the wrong experiment. I had written up my implementation of AES and not RSA. Luckily I had already implemented RSA, so it was just as simple as writing a new write up. Not terrible, but no fun to have to do last second.
Saturday was the day of getting my media paper. I have to admit during the week I played a little too much Fallout New Vegas, and spent a little bit too little time preparing my media paper. Before Saturday I had though about what I wanted to say and had a general outline.
Well on Saturday I finally sat down and just got all of it down on paper. I was actually surprised that I was able to fill up 3000 characters without much effort. The paper just seemed to come together smoothly. Obviously the Lord decided to give me some help, as writing a five page paper in English would have been hard for me to do in the same amount of time.
After finishing the paper I went out to dinner. After dinner I met up with Lars, Chris, Richard, Jonathan, Aaron, Dayu, and another native. We went out and played bowling. It was about 3 dollars USD a game, not bad at all. If we had gone on a weekday in the day it is only about $1.15 a game. I feel silly that I didn’t come and bowl more often. I have known of the alley, just never thought to go assuming it would be too expensive.
Well anyways, it was a lot of fun. I am still bowling really badly. My mission seems to have killed any skills in bowling that I used to have. luckily Lars was able to correct some of the problems in my game, and at least it feels like I have the same form I did before my mission. Now just to stop playing terribly.
Well as I said, this week has been busy. I hope that I will be able to get everything finished in time to go home.
Even though I mentioned all of that above, I think the best part of this week has been that I have found a new way of reading the Book of Mormon. Currently I am taking it one verse at a time, and I take about 20-25 minutes studying just that one verse. It has been amazing how much I have been able to learn in only the first 7 verses of the Book of Mormon.
I find it is helpful not only in helping me realize new principles, but also in giving me a chance to see principles I know reflected in the scriptures, and then write them down. As I record my impressions I truly have seen an increase in the amount of revelation I receive, and it is wonderful. If anybody is looking for a way to spice up their reading of the Book of Mormon, I heartedly suggest spending an entire study period on one verse each time.
That is it from me for this week. The next time I write will be from the US (hopefully). I don’t plan to stop writing just because I am in the US. I think this is a good habit, and here is hoping to keeping it up.
I am anxious to see you. I got through finals, although I blew the translation final. My bad final gave me a B- for the block, which I was unhappy about. I learned not to do a glossary when you only have three hours to translate a document; rather, you look up terms as you come to them. The subject was economics, and it was a much harder translation and longer, too, than any we had done in class. Doing the glossary cost me 10 points, but even without that loss, I would not have received more than a B for the class. It´s not the end of the world. I am hoping for a much better mark on my project this semester.
ReplyDeleteSee you at the airport on Wednesday. It was a good thing you called because I was set to pick you up on Tuesday. Now I can listen to the BYU/Utah BB game. Go, Cougs!