No vlog today

Here are the things that are keeping me from posting more vlogs: 

1. Time.  I don't have much time to vlog.  My schedule has enough time for sleeping, eating, studying, going to class, and a little bit of blogging, but not much time for vlogging.
   
2. The language pledge.  I can only do it when my roommate is out of the room, so he won't have to hear me speaking English.  He is often in our room.  It's his room too, after all.
3. My own lack of technical skill.  To be specific, my baffling inability to turn the microphone on and off at the appropriate times.  The first time I vlogged, I forgot to turn it off, and it was on for weeks, draining the battery. Another problem that I have is that every once in a while, when I do find an appropriate occasion to vlog, I manage to record without turning on the mic.  So of course, not that fun to listen to. 
   

Not that I have anything special to vlog about.  There was a brief period where I forgot in English how to say the opposite of "chunky peanut butter."  The answer, of course, is "creamy," but for a good five minutes, I was saying to myself "smooth?  smooth peanut butter?" 

Last night I was on my own for studying; it turns out I had been mis-invited to a study session that was really more of a date.  I ended up finishing my homework in record time, and then going to the nearby Starbucks to prepare the text for the next day.  Once I got there, I ran into four other A-ban students, and when we got hungry we all went to a KFC a few doors down.  I ordered the number three, which is the saddest fried chicken strip burrito you've ever seen in your life (cucumbers, mayonnaise and Old Beijing sauce), a little cup of corn salad, and a medium orange pop, which I gave to another student.  Chinese people like loud, and KFC was ear-splitting.  There was one point where there were three little boys climbing over the wall behind me, and I considered scaring them, but then I realized that would only lead to more screaming (if that is possible). 

One of my classmates has come up with a strategy for distracting our newspaper class teacher.  Tomorrow we'll see if it works.  We'll let her get through the vocabulary, and then before we can discuss the article (tomorrow's is about a polluted lake--yawn) we'll hi-jack the conversation. 

I have actually been chat/distracting the teachers in my one-on-one classes; usually they have me read aloud for an hour, torturing me every time I get a tone wrong.  But ever since the midterm, I haven't had to do much reading aloud.  I wonder if the teachers are really distracted, or if they made a decision to cut back on the tone-torture after the midterm.  Today I talked about degrees of sunburn and native medicine. 

I have to go buy some shaving cream.  Remind me to go do it after Tai Chi.