(no subject)
Hey, y'all, it's been a while, huh. I'm not dead, just at college. I did spent about ten days pondering the merits of "dead:" I've been sick twice in two weeks, which seemed implausible and unfair, as I'd only been sick about twice in the two years prior.
***
I won't take photos right now, but our suite is gorgeous--we've got a full-sized, fully equipped kitchen, a huge living room, and two bathrooms for six people. My only complaint is that we're not too much above ground level, so it's easy to see or be seen by everything going on outside: people in the parking lot... people waiting for the bus... the ice cream truck that likes to park outside our window... I also wish we weren't quite so far across campus from all the academic quads, but it can't be helped: all the upperclass dorms are about as far off campus as you can get on university property. And the walk should be considerably less painful now it's no longer 95 out. >.>
***
Chinese is an interesting mix of hard and easy. On the one hand, I'm still pretty terrible at determining pinyin spelling out of context. (Feng Laoshi was like "Yeah, people from certain regions in China can't tell the difference between certain sounds, like V/W," and K and I looked at each other and went "Yeah, Japanese people couldn't tell the difference between any of this. D|")
(After that he abandoned me. Jerk.)
My failure at x/sh/q/ch/j/zh was a little worrying since, good pronunciation aside, our professor's teaching approach is based on computer input, not written practice. I wasn't sure and still haven't decided how I feel about this: it certainly does help character recognition, and lets him devote class time to other things, and eliminates most of my simplified Chinese concerns. But I do have to know how to spell... and I'm fairly sure the computer is largely responsible for my general failure at writing kanji.
Armed with all these worries, I spent a good two hours studying prior to the first daily dictation quiz, finally figured out consonants, and then was somewhat unimpressed when our first dictation was 你叫什么名字？ orz No longer at all worried about written Chinese. Still slightly intimidated by the prospect of one-on-one language practice...
***
Made Feng Laoshi show me the characters for my new Chinese name, so I am now 泰莉, Tai as in Thailand, Li meaning "jasmine." Had a brief and highly dorky moment of delight realizing that my name is more or less equivalent to Ty Lee.
***
Head-of-department sensei much less intimidating than she was as a freshman. eiri_berry thinks she's less inherently crazy in her native language; I'm beginning to suspect that, courtesy of our time abroad, we've just realized that Sekino-sensei levels of crazy in middle-aged Japanese women are totally normal. (Also, her impressions of the first-years' trauma faces whenever she calls on them in class are hilarious.) Have not yet started tutoring--Sekino-sensei did not become better organized in my year abroad--but our briefing session suggested it should be fun and low-pressure.
She also emailed me a couple days ago to ask whether I wanted to represent our school at the upcoming inter-university Japanese speech contest. It might have been one of those Japanese non-questions, but I really didn't and said so: public speaking makes me hideously nervous in any language. Sensei agreed to this and went on to ask whether I wanted her to recommend me for another tutoring job, which I did. It seemed like too easy a victory and probably was; stellsonic said yesterday that Sekino-sensei was now harassing her to convince me to do it. orz
(My answer is still no. Antipathies aside, I don't know what I'd talk about: I took a quick look through the essays I'd written in Japan and discovered fairly quickly that they might not really do. I loved Kyoto--still do--but had a tendency to write about things like the fundamental, frustrating inability to escape the "gaijin" label in Japan, and suspect this is not quite the glowing review I'm supposed to give.
***
Fandom notes: 2NE1 so fierce I don't know how to handle it; Minzy giving CL some competition as my future wife. I know auto-tune is still fandom's favorite complaint, and I could live pretty happily without Nan Bappa, but Go Away and Sarangeun Ayaya are totally my new favorites.
I've only heard about half of the new NEWS album, but I'm fairly sure thus far that while I love Futari / 130000000 no Kiseki and am delighted that BE FUNKY! is finally on CD, LIVE won't be touching Color as my favorite album. We'll see: maybe I'll appreciate it more when not layered over Lady Gaga from the party next door.
***
I won't take photos right now, but our suite is gorgeous--we've got a full-sized, fully equipped kitchen, a huge living room, and two bathrooms for six people. My only complaint is that we're not too much above ground level, so it's easy to see or be seen by everything going on outside: people in the parking lot... people waiting for the bus... the ice cream truck that likes to park outside our window... I also wish we weren't quite so far across campus from all the academic quads, but it can't be helped: all the upperclass dorms are about as far off campus as you can get on university property. And the walk should be considerably less painful now it's no longer 95 out. >.>
***
Chinese is an interesting mix of hard and easy. On the one hand, I'm still pretty terrible at determining pinyin spelling out of context. (Feng Laoshi was like "Yeah, people from certain regions in China can't tell the difference between certain sounds, like V/W," and K and I looked at each other and went "Yeah, Japanese people couldn't tell the difference between any of this. D|")
(After that he abandoned me. Jerk.)
My failure at x/sh/q/ch/j/zh was a little worrying since, good pronunciation aside, our professor's teaching approach is based on computer input, not written practice. I wasn't sure and still haven't decided how I feel about this: it certainly does help character recognition, and lets him devote class time to other things, and eliminates most of my simplified Chinese concerns. But I do have to know how to spell... and I'm fairly sure the computer is largely responsible for my general failure at writing kanji.
Armed with all these worries, I spent a good two hours studying prior to the first daily dictation quiz, finally figured out consonants, and then was somewhat unimpressed when our first dictation was 你叫什么名字？ orz No longer at all worried about written Chinese. Still slightly intimidated by the prospect of one-on-one language practice...
***
Made Feng Laoshi show me the characters for my new Chinese name, so I am now 泰莉, Tai as in Thailand, Li meaning "jasmine." Had a brief and highly dorky moment of delight realizing that my name is more or less equivalent to Ty Lee.
***
Head-of-department sensei much less intimidating than she was as a freshman. eiri_berry thinks she's less inherently crazy in her native language; I'm beginning to suspect that, courtesy of our time abroad, we've just realized that Sekino-sensei levels of crazy in middle-aged Japanese women are totally normal. (Also, her impressions of the first-years' trauma faces whenever she calls on them in class are hilarious.) Have not yet started tutoring--Sekino-sensei did not become better organized in my year abroad--but our briefing session suggested it should be fun and low-pressure.
She also emailed me a couple days ago to ask whether I wanted to represent our school at the upcoming inter-university Japanese speech contest. It might have been one of those Japanese non-questions, but I really didn't and said so: public speaking makes me hideously nervous in any language. Sensei agreed to this and went on to ask whether I wanted her to recommend me for another tutoring job, which I did. It seemed like too easy a victory and probably was; stellsonic said yesterday that Sekino-sensei was now harassing her to convince me to do it. orz
(My answer is still no. Antipathies aside, I don't know what I'd talk about: I took a quick look through the essays I'd written in Japan and discovered fairly quickly that they might not really do. I loved Kyoto--still do--but had a tendency to write about things like the fundamental, frustrating inability to escape the "gaijin" label in Japan, and suspect this is not quite the glowing review I'm supposed to give.
***
Fandom notes: 2NE1 so fierce I don't know how to handle it; Minzy giving CL some competition as my future wife. I know auto-tune is still fandom's favorite complaint, and I could live pretty happily without Nan Bappa, but Go Away and Sarangeun Ayaya are totally my new favorites.
I've only heard about half of the new NEWS album, but I'm fairly sure thus far that while I love Futari / 130000000 no Kiseki and am delighted that BE FUNKY! is finally on CD, LIVE won't be touching Color as my favorite album. We'll see: maybe I'll appreciate it more when not layered over Lady Gaga from the party next door.