Friday, March 18, 2011

CLS Award!

Woohoo!

I'm headed to Shanghai, China this summer as a recipient of the Critical Language Scholarship Award, sponsored by the US State Dept.

Totally stoked.. although also a bit intimidated. I know my Chinese will be so good by the end of this, but the idea of spending two months in absolutely full language immersion is a bit daunting. On my list of many things to do includes writing a letter to my future Chinese roomie -- all in Chinese, no English allowed.

She's going to think I'm a 2nd grader based on my lack of vocab and grammar skills. I'm not worried about the speaking part. I speak it everyday and all the time.. its the more studying and memorizing characters.

I might forget all my English by the end of the summer. Alas.

But what is also cool is that this will tie into my thesis very nicely (you bet I'm writing a vocal orchestrated work that will use Chinese text) as well as the New Music Festival at U of L next fall.

No details on that, you'll just have to wait and see.

But for now, its formatting scores, mixing a couple movements in my dream sequence, and preparing to send off a few things to some competitions.. and writing this letter in Chinese.


1 comment:

Serenity said...

Congrats!!! I wont it, too - but for Arabic!