I Bought a TV

Dear Dad and Mom, The semester is already half over; the fall term wraps up in mid-December. A week ago, I spent $120 on a used color TV. It’s practically brand new—even the plastic wrap on the remote control is still on! The brand is Samsung, from South Korea, so the quality is pretty good. Now I can watch TV to work on my English. Since I haven't hooked up cable, I can only pick up about 7 or 8 local channels. My apartment lease is up at the end of February. I could renew it, but if possible, I’d really like to move to a different place and find an American roommate to help with my English. The university’s International Office runs a program called PALS (Partnerships to Advance Language Study), which pairs international students with Americans to build friendships and practice language skills. I signed up and got paired with a retired lady named Sarah. We meet once a week just to chat, and we've been doing it for about 4 weeks now. Right now, exams are starting to pile up, and I expect I'll have tests every single week from here on out. On one of my recent exams, the time limit was really tight and the questions weren't easy, so I only managed to finish half of them. I honestly thought I completely blew it. The test was out of 75 points, and I ended up getting a 42. Fortunately, since everyone's scores were so low across the board, the professor had to curve the final grades based on a total of 50 points. That turned my score into a 42 out of 50, which actually isn't bad at all! October 31st was Halloween, which is a pretty big deal here in America. I’m not entirely sure how to translate it into Chinese—maybe Wan Sheng Jie (万圣节)—but it’s basically a ghost festival. The story goes that ghosts all come back to life on this night. American kids dress up in costumes and go door-to-door trick-or-treating for candy, while adults put on scary or elaborate outfits and march in street parades. Lately, television has been full of ghost stories, and people buy pumpkins to carve faces into them. I assume Dad probably knows a bit about all of this? My wristwatch stopped working, and I can't even afford to buy a new one. Well, it's more that I just can't bring myself to spend that amount of money. For example, a digital watch only costs a few yuan back home, but here it runs $20 to $30. Yiqun’s transcripts finally came in, so she is busy getting her application materials together. She’s applying to 5 or 6 schools, including UT. I check in with her via email every now and then. I received your letter from October 22nd. The weather here in Austin runs pretty warm; even now in November, people are still walking around in short sleeves, and there's absolutely no need for a heavy winter coat. Today, I rushed to finish up a roll of film and got it developed so I could include the photos with this letter. Because I’ve been so busy, I haven’t had much time to take pictures, and there's been no one around to take photos of me. Every single photo taken since I arrived in America were shot by myself. Getting film developed is incredibly expensive here—it costs as much as $15! Photos 14 through 21 show the apartment I'm living in; 22 through 28 are a few spots around campus; and 29 through 33 were taken inside my room again. Number 34 is the outside of my apartment building, and 35 and 36 are the supermarket where I've been doing my grocery shopping lately. Love, Tong 11/5/1995