Beach life, souvlaki, and failed exams

Springtime in Xiamen has its ups and downs. One week you are enjoying life at the seaside, flying a kite with a charming Chinese girl, eating authentic Greek food with a Dutch friend you randomly met at a Chinese party, then the next week rain is pouring down in buckets day in day out, and you fail the listening comprehension test of your mid-term exams (I scored only 58). The oral exam went relatively well (87), but in my perception I did not make a lot of progress since the end of the previous semester. I have the feeling I'm reaching the limit of my brain's capacity to memorize Chinese words and grammatical constructs. Although my vocabulary is slowly but steadily increasing, my reading speed is well below the required level to finish the written exam on time. The result of which was a meager 63 points, which would have been around 80 if I would have been able to to finish the test in the given time.
Sometimes when a stranger talks to me, or I receive a phone call, I have no idea what the person is talking about until after she or he walked away or hung up. It's embarrassing. Luckily there are enough people patient enough to allow me to process the data at my own speed. Learning a language is a never ending process, and compared to the Chinese learning English, I'm actually doing pretty well. I have no intentions to give up any time soon, and have (again) decided to stay here a bit longer, not in the least to give my relationship with Ling Ling a fair chance to develop into something more permanent. She is planning to move to Xiamen this summer, which will make a big difference.