05/16/2006: "I am Jack's sigh of relief."

Yaaay! Finals are over. Not only that, but I got one of my grades back within 5 hours and I also found that my Japanese final grade had been posted earlier. I should get the last class grade by sometime tonight, or at least in the next few days. I'm not really worried, though. The first two classes were A's, and the last one is going to be a tossup tied to how well I wrote my essay answers on the test. Regardless, the worse I could do is a B, and I'm alright with that.

For some reason, children are drawn to the noisiest toys that they can possibly find. I don't know what it is about repetitive, annoying noises that soothes them, or otherwise makes them feel good, but if I ever had the same love for these things, it's definitely gone now.

With my newfound freedom, I haven't really done much at all, nor do I have any plans. I need to get something together soon, I don't like doing "nothing" for a long time, but it's alright for now. I have alot of movies and books I wanted to watch/read, so maybe I'll make a dent into that. My only condition right now is that the book I read isn't about Japanese history. As fascinating as it is, the past 3 books I've read have been about it, and I'd like some variety. That's the thing about history: no matter how much you read about it, it's going to be the same story, just with new words and details. Except when everything's different (which isn't as uncommon as it should be).

If I do take Mandarin (which I'm already signed up to take), I should start trying to learn something over the summer to at least be aware of what I'm getting into. From what I hear, it's easier than Japanese. But then again, the people telling me this speak it natively, so I'm not so sure of that. I'll make a decision on that later (when I actually have an ability to make some decision about it), but if I do decide to go through with it, it will mean that I'll have at least a passing understanding of 4 languages. This doesn't really mean much, other than that it would be cool, and increases the countries I could travel in and people I could talk to. Note, though, that one of these languages is Spanish (which I can read reasonbly and listen alright, but speaking's iffy) and I've only been to Mexico once or twice, both times because someone wanted to drag me there. My logic is kinda flawed.

I should go eat breakfast and do something, not sure what yet.. but I'm sure I'll find something.


Jason