Letter to a Taiwanese Friend

Dear P,

Life is getting on very well, but my days of lazing about at room temperature eating potstickers are over. I am now concentrating on editing Yang in Disguise while the heat in our house seems to drop. I have a cold, although it's getting better. Weekends are hardly breaks, and--well, probably enough complaining. After all you are busy in school with homework and tests. What do you do on weekends? Adrianna has her violin, I do last-minute Chinese homework, we both do Chinese class, and sometimes go biking. (Saturday). Sundays are sleep-in days of boredom. The most exciting thing on Sunday is Sixty Minutes, the TV program. Speaking of TV we watched the Oscars just now. Did you watch the Oscars? The "pre-Oscar" time is extremely boring. They claim the Oscars begin at four, but that's just when everybody's getting seated and obnoxious reporters interview rushing nominees. They drone on and on about spectacular gowns. A typical conversation between the reporters would be--"And the new trend with jewels on so-and-so and bare shoulders, so-and-so's dress is Calvin Klein, so-and-so is taking a note from so-and-so and wearing diamonds, so-and-so's dress is Versace with some great beads, so-and-so is wearing..." And it goes on in that vein for some time. My mom wanted me to watch it anyways. Watching the actual awards was alright, though. Some of the commercials were quite good. Weather has taken a rather nasty turn. It is quite rainy, foggy, and windy. What are you doing in Taiwan? What is your everyday life like? Is school harder, easier, or about the same? What are you studying right now? How did you like the Taiwanese book? Also, forgot to ask you. What did you do for Christmas? Did you celebrate it? What did you do for New Year's? (Chinese or otherwise.) I attatched a photo of our aunts and uncles on Christmas Day. I hope you'll be able to see it. I took the picture with the mini Lumix digital camera I recieved from my mom as a present. I also recieved a Santa hat, a lot of candy canes, a fifty dollar Barnes and Noble gift card, and a porcelain kind of vase shaped-thing for holding pencils, pens, and erasers. It was a pretty great Christmas. We ate a buffet breakfast in Todai, Redmond Town Center. By the way, we made bedding for "The Ontario Club" (also known as the "DAM Club"). My room is covered in soft bedding. So is Adrianna's. I said hi to K for you. Oh, by the way--guess what? We didn't get any homework for the weekend!!!

Please reply soon!

Love,
Dory

Homework

Homework-the word that inspires dread in students across the globe. Hours, days of misery cramped in your room or some other place doing an assignment from class when you could be doing something else. Skateboarding or ball for the sporty people, reading a novel or writing for the reading-and-writing sort of people, leisurely lounging around for the lazy people, building stuff for the building people. Cooking for the chefs, playing heavy rock or classical music for the music people...anything except HOMEWORK. The very word is stuffy and seems to carry the air of an uninteresting classroom about it. The procrastinators do it a few minutes before classtime or late at night, while the early-birds do it as soon as they get it. Either way, it's miserable for many people. Sure, it's a time spender if you have nothing else to do. (That's one of the purposes homework carries for me now I'm done a lot of my editing work on Yang in Disguise and I find it easy to write business letters). But homework drains your energy. When somebody asks "Wanna play a game tonight?" or "Wanna go to the _________?", many are forced to reply, crestfallen, "I have homework to finish". I'll write more later.

I have homework to finish.