Saving the Sioux language

你學中文的目地之一，是什麼？ What is one reason why you are learning Chinese? When asked that question in Chinese class, I can't come up with a good answer. I am not sure if I will study abroad in China or not. I don't particularly like talking with my mom in Chinese (or English). I don't think it'll help my career as a chemist (English is chemistry's lingua franca). On the plus side, I can understand Chinese movies and songs better now than before. And Chinese is more fun that Spanish was. But in the end, could I have been just as satisfied studying any other exotic language? Probably. Some second-generation immigrants feel obligated to learn their family's language. And they want to pass that language on to their kids. I don't feel the same way. If the language isn't useful, then there's no reason to force feed it to kids. One of the Chinese grad students in my lab just had a baby. He plans on moving back to China so that his kid can learn to speak Chinese. The Sioux Native American Indian tribe is struggling to maintain its language. They came up with the idea of Sioux Scrabble, which sounds fun...but I still don't see the point in all of this. New radioblog rotation up. Taste of Asia went swimmingly well. New AAA website will be up shortly, followed by a Taste of Asia page. Won a summer research scholarship, so I have to devote 10 weeks of the summer to full-time research. I also won two more scholarships, which are nice, but one of them was this software package that I don't think I need (or can run on Mac).