footsteps in my daily life
I talked to N-san over lunch at the cafeteria today. I learend from him about India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Since he's from India, he knows a lot about his own country and its political as well as historical relationships with its neighboring countries. To my shame, I didn't even know that Bangladesh was used to be called East Pakistan up until I listened to him about it... Compared to other Asian countries such as Korea, Taiwan, and China etc., India and its neighboring countries are unfamiliar to me... I started to be interested to know more about India and its neighboring countires after I talked to N-san...
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I cooked a Japanese food for C-san and his housemate. C-san will go back to Taiwan the day after tomorrow, so I just wanted to cook them some Japanese food as a token of my gratitude for their friendship with me. I had a pleasant time with them.
As usual on Mondays, I kept reading articles for a class almost all the time until the class began. The main topic for today's class was on the differences between L1 and L2 reading. Key words for today's class are as follows: lack of lexical, grammatical, and discourse knowledge in L2 reading, Orthographic Depth Hypothesis, and Language Threshold...
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I renewed my car insurance today: it costed me about $290 for half an year.
I left C'dale for STL around 5am to take C-san to the STL airport. On the way to STL, C-san expressed again and again how sad it was for him to leave the US... It is indeed sorrowful to part from good friends... But we have to admit that individual reality awaits us in the future: one has to go back to his/her former job, and the other has to try harder to find job after graduation... Pleasant time won't last forever, yet I'm sure our friendship never wanes.
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I stopped by Cathedral Basilica of STL and attended the Mass after I saw C-san off. Also, I went to Wespine to talk to Fr. M and P-san. I talked to B-san too.
I did nothing much today... Since I felt sick a bit, I just stayed home and kept sleeping...
Since I took enough rest yesterday, I felt much better today. Then I went to the rec-center with J-san first time in almost a week. After a couple of exercises, I suddenly felt dizzy and we ended up stopping exercise halfway... I seem to have pushed myself too much...
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As forecasted, it was snowing lightly almost all day long today.
Although it seemed to have stopped snowing by the time when the day broke and it was clearly sunny today, it was incredibly cold!!! The lowest temperature was, according to the weather forecast, about 6F, which means -14C!!! Even the highest temperature was just 22F (-5C)... But, I woke up early and went to the campus to take pictures of the snow scene. Even though I wore gloves, I barely felt my fingers since they got so cold as to be frozen... While I was walking around the campus looking for a good spot to take pictures, I ran into M-san. I'm wondering if she could do well on the Spanish exam...
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After lunch, I took K-san to a couple of places. He had just finished three exams this week, and still has one more for the next week...sounds very busy... Good luck, K-san!
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Later on I went out with J-san and had dinner together. After dinner we stopped by Barnes & Noble Booksellers, where I bought the book by Steven Pinker: Words and Rules since it was on sale. I wonder if I will be able to finish up reading the book...
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Structuralism, Gestalt Psycology, Cultural Relativism, Subjectivism and Capitalism...
After lunch, K-san came over to my place to return the humidifier I lent him. I then talked to him for a while. Afterwards, I went to A-san's house to join him and others for D-san's farewell party. There were lots of people there, and as usual there were various kinds of foods too. At the beginning of the party, we enjoyed watching the basketball game between SIU and Southwest Missouri State Univ. on TV. It was a close game, and we were all excited. It was just five seconds before the end that SIU turned the tables and won the victory by one point! It was really a close game! I've never been to the arena to watch the live game, so I wish I could sometime soon...
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I left the party earlier since I was still a little sick. On the way home, I stopped by a grocery store to buy a nasal decongestant. There were plenty of medicine of that kind being displayed, and which took me quite a while to decide which one to buy... After compared the ingredients of several medicines, I picked up the one that contained "Pseudoephedrine HCI" the most of all, which relieves nasal congestion. The one I picked up contained the substance four times more than any other medicines. It must be tremendously effective. I hope I can get over soon...