(no subject)
i have, since the last post, considerably cheered up. in fact, i'd go so far as to say, i'm *gasp* feeling happy again. it is on part due to some effort by me not to do certain things and avoid certain situations, but fuck, whatever works is good for now.
my oral test thankfully went brilliantly, mostly due to me going last but turning up to school at 10am (for my 12.15 test) because i couldn't remember what time i'd signed up for, and hanging out with the non-english speaking portion of my class and speaking to them a lot beforehand. that, and they told me what they'd been asked so i had a bit more prep under my belt.
the fact that i graduated onto the holy coveted blue book means now, i'm apparently "intermediate level". there's no english explanation in it anymore, our previously learnt kanji no longer has furigana (the phonetic spelling of the kanji) attached, and the writing now goes down the page, and you read the book from right to left so the whole thing looks WAAAAAY more japanese. you know when you're at uni and you've just come out the library with a load of books for your course, and you always position the most difficult looking book at the front so that the title is clearly visible just so people who walk past think "shit man, that girl is smart...."?. well, i'm loving this new book because it makes me feel smarter. hahaha. dork. nah, the whole transition to a new book thing, the new, more conversational format to the class and lack of need to constantly practice one grammar point is AWESOME. kinda made me feel like i may actually be making progress. i was starting to get really frustrated because i still feel so utterly crap.
a part of me snapped a little after spending that evening with greg speaking just japanese. it made me realise that although it was a struggle, and there was an awful lot of things i couldn't say, i was actually capable of doing it. and since then, i've become kind of sick of speaking english, at least to people i know who can speak japanese. sometimes i naturally revert back to english but still, i've started making much more of an effort to speak it.
anyway. all this talk of language is i'm sure boring reading and i'll stop.
tonight me, some of my year and our senpai are catching the overnight bus to niigata to go skiing. I AM SO FRICKING EXCITEDDD. hopefully its going to be an awesome weekend, apparently up on the mountain the snow's looking pretty good, and yay.
my oral test thankfully went brilliantly, mostly due to me going last but turning up to school at 10am (for my 12.15 test) because i couldn't remember what time i'd signed up for, and hanging out with the non-english speaking portion of my class and speaking to them a lot beforehand. that, and they told me what they'd been asked so i had a bit more prep under my belt.
the fact that i graduated onto the holy coveted blue book means now, i'm apparently "intermediate level". there's no english explanation in it anymore, our previously learnt kanji no longer has furigana (the phonetic spelling of the kanji) attached, and the writing now goes down the page, and you read the book from right to left so the whole thing looks WAAAAAY more japanese. you know when you're at uni and you've just come out the library with a load of books for your course, and you always position the most difficult looking book at the front so that the title is clearly visible just so people who walk past think "shit man, that girl is smart...."?. well, i'm loving this new book because it makes me feel smarter. hahaha. dork. nah, the whole transition to a new book thing, the new, more conversational format to the class and lack of need to constantly practice one grammar point is AWESOME. kinda made me feel like i may actually be making progress. i was starting to get really frustrated because i still feel so utterly crap.
a part of me snapped a little after spending that evening with greg speaking just japanese. it made me realise that although it was a struggle, and there was an awful lot of things i couldn't say, i was actually capable of doing it. and since then, i've become kind of sick of speaking english, at least to people i know who can speak japanese. sometimes i naturally revert back to english but still, i've started making much more of an effort to speak it.
anyway. all this talk of language is i'm sure boring reading and i'll stop.
tonight me, some of my year and our senpai are catching the overnight bus to niigata to go skiing. I AM SO FRICKING EXCITEDDD. hopefully its going to be an awesome weekend, apparently up on the mountain the snow's looking pretty good, and yay.