Hello everyone,
First off, we have new pictures! I know it’s exciting. They can be found here. They are pictures of the first three weeks or so. I know I haven’t been updating as regularly as I should but that’s okay because I plan to change that starting right now. Just so I can amuse you, I’ll give a brief rundown of my boring life here.
The first couple of weeks were already covered for the most part but the major thing that happened was covered in my last blog post. I broke my back during the second week of school. It wasn’t too bad, and I’ve healed well. Now I can ride my bike again. The bike has been a wonderful investment. It was about $22.00 total for something I will easily get $23.00 worth of use this year. I need to actually take a picture of the thing at some point It’s a blueish bike that is very typical of an Asian bike. This means that it has no gears and has a front basket. You’d know it if you see it. You could just look it up on your favorite search engine (e.g. Google, Yahoo, ect.) if you want to know and can’t wait for my pictures.
Now on to school! School is in its fifth or sixth week at this point. I’m not quite sure but it has gone by really fast. I’m finally in my mode of doing school work here. It took quite sometime for it to sit right with me as its quite different then what I’ve been experiencing the past two years at UNM. The classes are structured more like my high school was. At the same time they are more like a University in the sense that they are only once a week if they are normal classes. Mine however are not normal at all. I have different classes that are always with the same people.
Japanese Reading and Writing
This class is a great class. This is the only class that I have everyday but its the only one I really need to have everyday. This is the basic language class. We do vocab, grammer, kanji, and reading everyday. For those who don’t know what kanji is, it’s the writing that is used in Japan. Each character represents an idea and has a meaning. There can be many different ways to actually read the kanji based on the context. Its complicated but makes reading a lot easier since a lot of Japanese words are the same but they just mean different things. So anyways, I have this class everyday but there is a different teacher almost everyday. I have one teacher twice and she’s the nicest one. So it’s a lovely treat. I do have another teacher again but she teaches another class. I should mention that this class is entirely in Japanese. No English is spoken. Fun, huh?
Japanese Culture
This class happens once a week and is taught by a teacher I already have. This class is my most confusing as I have no clue what is going on usually. This class is taught entirely in Japanese as well. I’ve gotten better so this has become less confusing. Still, it’s hard. This class though just focuses on the over all structure of Japanese society, history and various other things. Its a very fun class. I had a test the other day that I did well on. How? I don’t know.
Japanese Speaking and Listening
This class is exactly what it sounds like. This class is all speaking and listening skills. Its ALSO in Japanese but its not as hard as you think it would be. We just talk for the most part and fill in sheets of paper based on all the conversations we hear. The only thing of note we’ve done so far that isn’t just what I described is we had a speech on our home country or in my case, state. I did well. We had to write a speech, she corrected our grammer errors then we read. I really hope that we do something else like this again. One last thing, we have this class twice a week. I really do enjoy it.
Japanese Society
My only class that’s in English. Its a course that focuses on Japanese society and Japan’s role in the world. It’s taught by a guy who has an accent I can’t tell. He’s a very nice guy and has a child on the way. I wish him well.
Japanese Ceramics
This is a fun class that I have for half a day on Saturdays. We just make stuff out of clay. I’ll talk about it more once I have some actual finished product.
So that’s really it for all my class stuff. I think I’ll end this post for now as its approaching one thousand words. I’ll finish with a picture of me doing something weird. In this case, its me in my Halloween costume!
I AM AMERICA!
-Kyle
