Plans for my holiday
Find a job (ready and firing)
Revise all my languages (chinese, maori done)
Do language exchange in all my languages (first steps done)
Read a book in Chinese (underway)
Write a reply to a professor regarding free-will (draft done)
Read the Bible (started)
Get fit and lose a little weight
Prepare for a long tramp
Establish my plan for life in the new year (where I am living etc.)
Prepare Christmas gifts
Paint my personal koru picture (materials bought)
Write more short stories (started)
Play chess and visit the local club
Read at least one English novel (started)
Prepare to teach through next year (still recovering from the diploma)
Work out my financial situation
Apply for a tax return on charities (forms and receipts are buried)
Apply for the dole for the time being
Apply for a Listener subscription (re-ask for a form)
Revise my goals and make them specific
Watch thought-provoking movies
Revamp waking and sleeping times so that I can rise before sun occasionally
(possible) Get a job (if my financial situation should require me to and if time allows)
4 comments:
How are you organising language exchange? Is it through university, or something you independently organised?
I have gone through my options this week. On Tuesday I searched the noticeboards at the Asian Languages Building (Auckland Uni) but mainly came up with nothing.
I then went to the Student Learning Centre at Univerity where the LEX (Language Exchange) programme runs. You can get matched to people for just the registration fee of $10. I have used them before and was quite happy but I didn't want to pay another $10. So I tried to get sneaky and said "You have a surplus of Asian students on your books. I can absorb around 4-5 of them (which incidentally means that they have to pay $10), so would you mind waiving my $10 fee." They said no, it is apparently a University requirement (?). So I said I would head back to my language school to investigate the possibilities as well as advertise my willingness to the students. However there are only 6 students at the school (cringe!). But there are Japanese students so I may be able to get a partner from there.
Then I decided to go to my existing contacts, former students and acquaintances. Sometimes it is easier to maintain a productive excahnge relationship with someone you don't know, but at the same time, it is nice to help friends by helping yourself. So I now have 1 Korean exchange partner (a friend of a friend), and 2 Chinese exchange partners (former students).
So I just need a Japanese partner and if possible a Maori one too.
It sounds like using your contacts has worked well.
How do you do your language exchange? Do you decide to speak in one language at one meeting, then the other language at the next meeting? Or, maybe each person only speaks their native language?
And as fate would have it, I have a Japanese language exchange partner now. A night at the orchestra with my hyper-sociable vegetarian friends hooked two Japanese girls into coming, one of which is already well connected with language exchange and another that is very willing to have a go at it. So I'm pretty sure of the latter being able to do a few sessions of language exchange.
That means this weekend I really need to refresh my Japanese. Actually I remember that it is on the radio right now...
> How do you do your language exchange?
It is very flexible. It can be whatever the two people want it to be. For me, I think it is best to have two different parts, completely in one language and then completely in the other language. That suits me for Chinese because I am fairly fluent.
For Japanese and Korean I will need a different approach to unlock all my latent, hidden knowledge. I will think about that over the weekend.
It is best that both people bring some questions or language goals or some areas they would like to practice.
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