Panda eyes.

That's a cute name for such an unattractive feature. Just a couple nights up until 3am and staying in bed until noon is enough to run rings around one's eyes. The skin tissue just looks like it's in terrible shape, and it looked so much better before. It's something I've got to work on, and that means less internet procrastination...

Or I could just live with panda eyes. Sounds cuter than it looks.

Speaking of pandas and things I need to concentrate on, my Chinese studies have been lagging behind. Am I the only one who has no idea what he wants to do with his life? Chinese is the only consistent class so far, and I'm not very good at it. I've got to get back to practicing daily, for extended periods of time just to catch up on material I should have gotten last year. At least now I know how to keep up with current school material, but I still have no confidence in my language skills at all.

My family and relations keep asking me why I took Chinese, or they say how Chinese is the language of the future or something like that. I don't really know how to explain it myself, other than that I wanted to have a second language secure in my head and that Chinese and Arabic were the two that seemed more useful at the time that did not involve the roman alphabet. An ex-Muslim friend of mine dissuaded me from taking Arabic, so I decided on Chinese. Every now and then I think I might have wanted to take Japanese, but regardless I'm going to keep Chinese as my second language. Not that I know what I'm going to do with it other than understand conversations and text in Mandarin. I've made quite a few friends and acquaintances who are Chinese nationals, but I'm never sure how much my own social life amounts to. And when my family and relations keep bringing up possible paths of work for someone who knows Chinese, I'm never really the interested in the choices. Translator, interpreter, diplomat, businessman, even being a teacher seems like a lofty and unrealistic goal for me. I don't know, I still only do most of my favorite work in some kind of advocacy for secularism.

Whatever the case I've got to set aside more time for Chinese. My GPA is far too low for me to study abroad, so I've got to start getting A's straight away. Nevermind that I still don't really know how well I'll manage in my other classes. I just want to be able to study in China for a while. I have no idea what for, but that's pretty much the story of my life.

Oh, and I'm sick of the ignorance my family shows to foreign affairs, but moreso their ignorance of Asians that live right here at home. That's why I'm still a little uncomfortable whenever race comes up, even for humor.