Since My First Term At My New School Is Over And I Have Above The Required Gpa I Am Finally Eligible

Since my first term at my new school is over and I have above the required gpa I am finally eligible for study abroad!!!

I submitted my application for the program yesterday and have already been conditionally accepted to go by my school as long as i’m accepted into the program.

and the country i applied to is….. 🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁

Taiwan!

the program is in taipei specifically, and on a university campus. if accepted ill also have a chance to visit tainan and taitung.

i’d be going for about 2 months over the summer for an accelerated/intensive mandarin course. it’d be the entire intermediate level (= CHN201+202 in U.S. college credit). as far as I know I’d have class 5 days a week while there. i’m taking CHN 102 (upper elementary) in the spring here at home to prepare and spending my break reviewing stuff from 101 as well as teaching myself zhuyin/bopomofo.

if anyone has good resources for zhuyin, traditional characters, and/or taiwanese mandarin lmk!! im trying to find everything i can then i’ll compile a list of what was most helpful sometime during or at the end of the semester :))

someone help me lock tf in. theres a month left of the school year and ive been behind all semester. thinking about taking one or two of my classes pass/fail and dont know if its a dumb idea but i dont want to tank my gpa

brainstormed and made an account who wants to be tt mutuals 👀

i wanna start a studytok but i need ideas first 🤔

i feel like the only thing keeping me going rn is my academic goals, im so burnt out and tired all the time and can only convince myself to get through these last 2 weeks of the semester by thinking about the gpa i need to apply for scholarships abroad 😭

week 1 of studying chinese everyday in january

so ive (kinda) started over with mandarin to learn traditional characters rather than simplified, which is what i learned in the CHN101 course at my community college

this is because i’ll hopefully be studying in taiwan over the summer and that is where most of my interest is plus traditional should somewhat help with japanese as well as if i wanna learn cantonese in the future

i didnt record what i did daily so heres a summary so far

- have gotten an okay handle on zhuyin, just need practice and to learn where each character is on apples zhuyin keyboard since the site i used to learn used something else. i do like the concept more than pinyin but some of the final combinations confuse me (more on that another day)

- started reviewing my integrated chinese textbook as thats what both my old and current college use as their class resources. i bought the fluencylink (e-learning) account this time instead of the physical textbook and i looove it, its interactive, contains all the audio/video to go along and gives immediate grades on each section you complete. i did buy the physical workbook just to have in class though.

- have been taking some online classes through LTL and despite signing up/paying for group classes every class ive taken so far has just been 1 on 1 (i take them at like 3 am so i guess other people just dont sign up for those times) and have been enjoying it! online classes and tutors have made me anxious in the past and prior to this my online mandarin teachers almost never corrected my tones which i hated but these are great! i definitely feel like my pronunciation has improved but i still have to work a lot on sentence flow and tone sandhi/combinations.

- scouring the internet for taiwanese shows/movies/youtubers etc to get a feel for the accent differences and just for some listening practice (if you have recommendations lmk)

- also been going crazy looking for apps and sites that offer traditional characters as most are made for simplified/standard mandarin. i have a few that i like so far but hope to find more. i like to have a textbook to guide me through and give me structure but also various other resources to learn things that interest me or that i’ll actually talk about in daily conversation.

overall feeling pretty good and pretty excited to finally get back to studying languages and traveling.

oh and!!! i have mostly finalized what my chinese name is with the help of the teachers i’ve had so far, hence the username change as well and it is … 昕霓 ! (xīnní) i havent chosen a last name tho as im not sure if i need one atm but if anyone has ideas as to what would sound good im open to suggestions.

if anyone would want it im more than happy to post what resources ive been using, and/or what media ive been watching/liking that use traditional characters since its definitely been a little more challenging to find it all. lmk !!

i wanna start a studytok but i need ideas first 🤔