Wow, I haven't blogged in about a month and a half. I keep putting it off somehow, it becomes a bit of a drag sometimes. It's mainly a tool to keep people back home in the loop with regards to how things are coming along in my life over at the other end of the world. I must say the first week of school has passed awfully slowly. Maybe it's because I'm maxing out on term credits- 18 credit hours, and it seems like there's a ton of work to be done. Which is terribly true. I can't even remember the courses I'm taking sometimes, because it's more than I'm accustomed to. I think it's probably because 3 of my courses are 3-credit classes with 4-credit workloads, and so that piles on the stress. Haha. I'm doing 3 political science courses in an attempt to attain my major as quickly as I can- Russian politics, Southeast Asian politics, and international political economy. In addition, I'm taking a German conversation course, a 1-credit course which looks to be great fun since I've been so lucky as to get perhaps the best German instructor ever for my weekly hour-long class. The remaining 8 credits go to Econ 401 (Intermediate Microeconomics), and Econ 404 (Statistics for Economists). I envision these two courses dealing me a slow death if I don't keep up with the work, because 401 is highly math-reliant and 404 is, well, all about statistics. Just yesterday I almost died doing basic differentiation for 401. Thankfully it all started coming back to me after a few frantic minutes of scribbling and jabbing calculator buttons. Hopefully it gets better. Screw math, I thought I'd never have to use it again... Oh well, I guess that's what you get for being an econ major in the US.

Elected not to continue with crew this year for a couple of reasons, especially since I don't think I'll particularly enjoy slogging away on the ergometer for the rest of my Michigan life. Because I don't think I'll ever see the interior of a boat again. Hunting desperately for another sport to altogether consume my life, it's a tough job. So far only triathlon makes the cut, except that the UM Tri Club's a fledgling organization run by 18-year-olds and doesn't particularly catch my fancy. I think I'll have to look to the Ann Arbor Tri Club to provide me with more semblance of proper training. I need some structure, now that I've left rowing.

The new apartment at Tappan is pretty good. I'm pleased with my own room and my flatmates are awesome, save for the fact that our fridge is kinda packed and we are having a wee bit of trouble finding what belongs to whom. At least we managed to get a decent cable/ internet deal from Comcast and hooked up the router yesterday night (no easy task, considering the tangle of cables and the fact that the previous occupants of our flat did strange things like drilling holes in the walls and passing cables through them), and so I've finally got internet access.

Life is generally good- well, at least until it's time to hand up the next econ problem set assignment.