好好学习，天天向上

The tittle reads "hao hao xuexi, tian tian xiang shang," which means study hard and progress daily. This is what my Chinese friend 小妹 (xiaomei) taught me. I thought this would be a great tittle for my blog about the first week of school (also, so I wont forget).　谢谢小妹！
Some people have the desire to learn to play the guitar or piano, learn to cook, or become a professional athlete....well, I have the desire to learn Chinese. I have had this desire to learn Chinese that has grown greater and greater over the past couple of years. There are 2 main reasons to learn Chinese: the first is for family reasons. My goal is to one day sit down and talk to apo (my grandma) and have a deep conversation about her life and what my father was like when he was young to find out some dirt on him. Now-a-days my conversations with my grandma usually consist of a few main phrases in Cantonese such as: "wo fan gao" (i sleep), "hei san!" (wake up!), "sek fan" (eat!), "jo san" (good morning), "bu shufu" (i don't feel good), "yum jau" (drink beer), "mo man tai" (no problem), and "liu sa bao" (one of my favorite dimsum dishes, which translates to golden sand bun or something like that...yummmy, Alex, you will love these and we will eat plenty in August. Oh, and Happy Birthday baby brother!).
The second reason I want to learn Chinese is for future survival in a flat world. China is an economical tiger and I am too lazy to get an MBA, so I figure being fluent in Chinese will be just as valuable as an MBA. Besides, an MBA is out of my budget right now and something I never really thought about. I could work for a company and then maybe they would pay for an education but then I would have to sign a contract with them and I would have to do part time MBA while working, which would mean work from 8-5 then go to MBA classes that are difficult and you actually have to do work for them, then I would have to go home and study all night and then wake up from a snooze on one of my 700 page text books, which i drooled all over, just in time for morning rush hour commute to that company I dread..... wow, thats deep. Instead I have been getting up at 7ish, going to class for 4 hours, then meet with some Italians to have lunch for a couple hours followed by an espresso. La dolce vita (I need to learn a phrase like that in Chinese).
I guess another reason to learn Chinese is to communicate with my future wife. I think my dad and or grandma are going to have some young ladies lined up for me when we have our family reunion in August at Zhuhai, hometown China......NOT!
I better study hard everyday so I can make daily progress... it just doesn't translate... so, "好好学习，天天向上." Class in the morning, week 2 begins. Goodnight.