09/08/2006: "The joys of Japanese"

It's distinctly possible that I'm getting "too busy" at this point. I'm not quite there yet, but I keep adding things to my schedule. Fortunately, most are optional and I can start to clear things up if I get too busy, but I'm starting to spend excessive amounts of time sitting on campus. Case in point, right now. I have another 3 hours of waiting until I meet up with someone to go practice Japanese, and then ideally go home.

Honestly, it looks like most of my time taken up is Japanese-related. once a week I go to a "language table" where any student can go and practice Japanese for about an hour with native speakers (all the native speakers teach Japanese classes), and I'm going to change that to twice a week starting Monday. Twice a week, I meet an ESL Japanese exchange student for more speaking practice (he needs help with English, I do with Japanese). Currently, I'm in the process of recruiting yet another native Japanese-speaking exchange student. The things people go through to get good at a language.. blah. None of these things are required, though, so I can reschedule or drop things if it interferes with school.

However, I do notice an improvement, and feel more confident and more capable in speaking. It's also interesting at the "language table", since there are students of all levels, and being able to see the different stages. Apparently I've made some progress, at least.

Other than that.. the week went by fairly quickly, fortunately. Wake up, go to school and write notes, come home and do homework/read, do something totally unproductive, go to bed, repeat. After I'm done with writing this, I need to go summarize some more chapters for my Chinese history class. Kinda boring, but the work needs to get done. Might as well do it while I'm a "captive audience" and can't go anywhere.

That's about it for now. Just rambling, since I have the time. Probably going to go steal a glass-enclosed study room now so I can write my papers in relative peace while the world watches. So, away I go!


School