Things that don't surprise me:

I love doing things that are creative and artistic. I love singing, I love playing my flute, or listening to others play instruments, I love to knit. I sing and I knit during the breaks between classes, and, I think I do both quite well.

There is one thing that I have never been able to do well: Draw. Never, in my life, have I been good at art. My crowning moments of drawing manifest themselves in classroom doodles, the best of which was the collection of Penguins I drew during my 12th grade physics class. (They are on my facebook page, if you are curious).

I have often wondered why, if I have no artistic talent whatsoever, I decided to study Chinese, a language whose written form requires some kind of hand-eye coordination. An even more relevant question, at the moment, is why I decided to take the calligraphy courses that HBA offers.

Today, we had our first class; well, technically last week was our first lesson, but we all went to buy the relevant equipment (brush, ink, paper, etc.) so we didn't actually try our hands at painting the characters. I thought that, because I know kinda-sorta how to draw characters in a kinda-sorta nice way, calligraphy might not be too hard.

Boy was I wrong.

First of all, writing with a pen/pencil and writing with brush and ink are 完全不同。Secondly, getting the character that you are painting to look nice--not easy. Add no artistic capability and insecurity and you have me during my first calligraphy class ever.

(my trusty 毛笔 (brush) and other things whose names I can't remember in Chinese or English. but you use them in calligraphy.)

It was scary, and the teachers were not second year student teachers, so they spoke quickly and used vocabulary that was not something I had ever come across. On top of that, because there were a good fifteen of us in the class, with only two teachers, they couldn't spend too much time helping out individual students, much to my distress.

At the end of the class, they collected our names that we ourselves had painted. They said that, at the end of the eight weeks, we would compare and see how far we've come along. I feel like I won't have made too much progress...but then again, that was how I felt about my Chinese at the beginning of this program, and I already can see noticeable improvements...Of course, I have far more confidence in my language learning-speaking capability than I do in my ability to develop as an artist.

(my first attempts at calligraphy. and my ipod.)

In other news, it rained today, and I can now see the mountain out of my window again. I've missed it. It's been super hazy for over a week.

Also, it's July? When did that happen. Golly things are going fast...