I'm Trying to Post more Frequently

I am certainly enjoying this no school thing. I had the past two days off, then today and tomorrow are half days because of testing. Monday and Tuesday too. I took English and Chemistry tests today and then had the afternoon off. I did fairly well on English but Chemistry was about 1000 times harder than the last test. It could be that since these are finals the test covered a wider range of material, or that I haven’t paid attention in chemistry class since at least December, perhaps earlier. Or it could be that I can’t read the kanji for redox reaction, butanol, acedic acid, or any of the other terms that may have been on the test. I can’t be sure because those words aren’t in my dictionary either. I basically bombed that test. That’s okay though because I don’t get grades. I’ve had mixed opinions about this but right now I really like not getting grades. It’s allowed me to concentrate on what I want to learn. It has also let me catch up on world news and Superbowl commercials.

I have been doing a fair amount of learning though. I’ve continued studying the newspaper daily. We’re now into week three and I’m still averaging about 15 new words a day. Many of these I forget quickly but often they’ll reappear in the paper and I get my memory refreshed. I’m going to get a Japanese grammar book soon since I finished my grammar book over two months ago and haven’t worked on any since. I’ve been so focused on just getting kanji in my head I’ve ignored grammar. But now I can read all the kanji in a sentence and not get the meaning because the words are arranged funny. Time for some grammar, which is annoying because Japanese grammar is difficult and completely unlike English. You essentially have to read backwards to get the meaning. This is annoying because I have to hold the words in my head and then deconstruct it at the end. Eventually I want to be able to just get information straight without going through the laborious process of thinking really hard about it.

I also started Mandarin. When Sha left for Taiwan, my host mother bought a Mandarin grammar book with a CD to start learning so she could talk to Sha in his native language. She started last night and I jumped in with, “I would love to learn Mandarin.” So now it’s a family endeavor. Chinese grammar in comparison to Japanese is ridiculously simple. Now I know why my sister keeps telling me Chinese is easy. Verbs don’t have tenses; the word order is very similar to English, no articles, easy stuff. The pronunciation and writing system are different animals but at least grammar is simple. No conjugating verbs. I is hungry. No verb tense. I is hungry tomorrow. I is hungry yesterday. Awesome. Plus the kanji all have one reading as opposed to Japanese where they can have three of four. I’m looking forward to this. It should be fun. Japanese is obviously my priority but Chinese can be a side project. I always have Sha to talk to on skype in Taiwan to practice. Plus starting a new language has already highlighted how much Japanese I know which is really quite a bit at this point. Plus I’m doing it with my family, which makes it a whole group effort. I’m much more likely to be motivated in something if I do it with someone. It’s why I’ve kept up with reading the paper when I haven’t kept up with other methods of learning how to read.

That’s all for today. Tomorrow, who knows?