Yeah, so it has been a while, huh? I'm a bad blogger. I'll sit in the corner for a few minutes and contemplate my penance.
It is often hard to blog when one's life is so... I don't want to say uninteresting but I suppose it is, and repetitive. And if and when there are interesting bits, they are easy to convey quickly. For example:
I GOT TICKETS TO SEE VIENNA TENG in November!
See how quick and easy that was to convey? However, I am super-duper excited about it. So much so that despite my birthday being in November (gaining another year is never easy, is it?) I want November to be here oh, I don't know, like RIGHT NOW. She is playing at Stubb's Barbecue on November 12th in Austin, Tx. As long as I have been a fan, she has never had a show in Texas. I'm not sure that she's ever been here at all. But she's coming! To both Austin and Houston (but seriously? Fuck Houston). I mean, I'm sure that people think Houston is a very nice city and they enjoy living there and raising their families, etc. but I hate Houston. In fact, as far as Texas goes, I don't do well outside of Austin or San Antonio. Can you be xenophobic about things within your own state?
Anyway... Jessica is going with me to the concert, whether she likes it or not. Actually she wants to go, but even if she didn't I would still make her. What's the point of being a Texan if you can't hog-tie people?
On a different note, school started again on Monday and I am enjoying the diversion. I have spent the summer playing video games, drinking and twiddling my thumbs and although that might sound like a great way to pass the time, it's really not. I am being a total slacker this semester and only taking two classes, but that's because that's all I need to finish out my Associate's degree. Actually, I am going to clep out of one of the classes (a basic comp sci class? I think I'm familiar with computers, kthxbai) and instead I am taking Conversational Japanese. The other course is what is lovingly referred to as "liberal arts math" as in, "math for people who suck at math and therefore become lib art majors to avoid interaction with higher level biology, math, and chemistry classes". My last math teacher basically implied that it wasn't real math and it was for students who should be on the short bus. He was a bit of a bastard, though.
I am a bit concerned about taking the math class online because though I have taken classes online before, I've never taken a math class online and I tend to be an extremely needy student. However, the content looks pretty comprehensive, including video lectures, self-study, homework and quizzes to track progress. Plus, if I'm truly stuck on something I have a lot of options to get help. On-campus we have a lab where you can go without appointment to get help from volunteers. Or you can schedule a 30-minute session with a volunteer that is strictly one-on-one. Or you can actually go to the professor, of course. There's no reason to be floundering around in the dark, really. Even though I suck at math, I should be able to do this.
The conversational Japanese course is turning out to be quite a bit more basic than I was expecting. Sensei told me that it was a basic class and that it would be too easy for me, but I thought she was just being polite. On the first day of class we studied useful expressions (good morning, my name is _____, pleased to meet you, etc.) and began studying hiragana with the first 15 characters. I know all this stuff so it's a breeze for me, but maybe I can help the other students or something.
I have a difficult time telling how my mastery of Japanese is going. I know a lot. I know about sentence structure, I know basic conversational skills, but I have some major shortcomings in my development which really hinder me. First of all, I can't read Kanji for shit. Kanji is the alphabet that has over 5,000 characters, over 2,000 of which are commonly used, and has its roots in the Chinese alphabet. Kanji is used everywhere for everything all the time. It's very frustrating because when I see a Japanese newspaper I can read like 70% of the characters, but since I can't read the Kanji, I have no idea what it's saying. The Kanji establishes the noun or even the verb so the only thing left for me to read is the copulas and particles. Imagine just being able to read "______ ran to the ______." out of "Jack ran to the store." Totally frustrating. On top of that, my verbal skills aren't very quick and when I hear Japanese, it's often spoken so quickly that I can't understand it. And my vocabulary is severely lacking as well.
And yet I could tell you that I want something, or ask where something is or for directions. I could tell you what I wanted to do in many instances, or how I was feeling. It's weird, most people can understand a language better than they can speak it. I'm the opposite. Maybe that's the difference between immersion learning and just basic studying. Perhaps when I get to Japan, my studying will blend with immersion learning and I will be able to become fluent. I hope.
Hah, 14 paragraphs later... And here I thought I had nothing to write about!
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