insomnia sucks

so i cant get my brain turned around no matter what i do... this is gonna be a short one so i can go try and take a nap.

yesterday afternoon i met with the president, vice president, and dean of the university, the foreign dept people, and the other new foreign teachers. there are two older japanese guys, a middle-aged korean guy (every time he speaks korean i think of lost), and a 23-year old russian girl from irkusk named olga. olga speaks english well enough, and her chinese is pretty good. the korean guy speaks chinese very well though not fluently, and neither of the japanese guys speaks any chinese.

now imagine the scene when we wet to dinner; the three bigwigs, two foreign affairs reps. the two japanese guys and their translator, the korean guy, olga and her translator, and me amd my translator kelly. madness ensued. half the time i just sat there trying to figure out who was speaking what language when. it was kinda fun. each person was called upon in turn to make a toast, and it took a while to translate them all. i learned how to say 'what is this?' and 'bottoms up' in japanese. i suppose those two phrases are useful in their own way.