Turning Japanese!
A friend of mine turned me onto an awesome learning (or relearning?) tool today. My Japanese reading comprehension has been slowly slipping away ever since I left Japan, oh my god, EIGHT years ago! I spent a long, long time building my character vocabulary, reading and memorizing the written language every chance I got. My parents recently brought up several trunks of mine that they had kept in storage for me while I gallavanted abroad, and inside one of them I found hundreds of character flashcards that I had made for myself. As much stress as I was under in Japan, and as sure as I am that I never want to live there again, it's been kind of sad to have slowly lost something I worked so hard to obtain. But today my friend introduced me to a kanji-a-day flashcard for my homepage. It automatically gives you a new character when you log in, and you can click on it to get pronunciation and meaning information. I've already seen several kanji that I had forgotten. They seem to pop right back into the memory, though!
I had another strange dream last night. There was a very tall, narrow mountain (like a Chinese karst, if you're familiar), and I was on some sort of camping trip with my ex-boyfriend and another person (I'm not sure who). It was dark and we were settling in for the night. My ex and the other person were sleeping on top of the mountain, but for some reason I had to stay on the side of the cliff - there wasn't enough room at the top for all of us. I tried to dig my heels in and hold onto the side, but some dirt gave way beneath my feet, and I fell all the way down to the bottom, where there was tons of thick vegetation. I was trying to make my way through the brush to climb back up the mountain, but it was night and thousands of spiders had spun their webs between every possible branch. I started freaking out and running as fast as I could through the brush, holding my bathrobe (???) out in front of me to block as many webs/insects from hitting me directly, but I could feel spiders hanging onto every part of my body. I woke up from the dream a tad panicky, and went downstairs. After I came back upstairs, I fell asleep and had another dream in which I was explaining my first dream to Uhungus. I distinctly remember describing the shape of the mountain to her.
Why are my dreams so bizarre? I hope this doesn't mean that I'm going to fall off a cliff any time soon... or be attacked by spiders.
I had another strange dream last night. There was a very tall, narrow mountain (like a Chinese karst, if you're familiar), and I was on some sort of camping trip with my ex-boyfriend and another person (I'm not sure who). It was dark and we were settling in for the night. My ex and the other person were sleeping on top of the mountain, but for some reason I had to stay on the side of the cliff - there wasn't enough room at the top for all of us. I tried to dig my heels in and hold onto the side, but some dirt gave way beneath my feet, and I fell all the way down to the bottom, where there was tons of thick vegetation. I was trying to make my way through the brush to climb back up the mountain, but it was night and thousands of spiders had spun their webs between every possible branch. I started freaking out and running as fast as I could through the brush, holding my bathrobe (???) out in front of me to block as many webs/insects from hitting me directly, but I could feel spiders hanging onto every part of my body. I woke up from the dream a tad panicky, and went downstairs. After I came back upstairs, I fell asleep and had another dream in which I was explaining my first dream to Uhungus. I distinctly remember describing the shape of the mountain to her.
Why are my dreams so bizarre? I hope this doesn't mean that I'm going to fall off a cliff any time soon... or be attacked by spiders.