Waffles!
Today I went to Brussels with an interesting troup of people: L & D (who speak French, Dutch and English), T (who speaks Japanese, English, a bit of Dutch and pretends to speak a bit of French), K (who speaks Japanese an English), Y (who speaks Dutch, Japanese, English and French) and me.
My. head. sucked. today.
The mixing of languages didn't go well at all for me. I ended up replying in Dutch to Japanese and in Japanese to French. >.<
In general the day was rather fun. I understood 50% of what was being said in Japanese, and almost everthing of what was being said in the other languages, so I guess I should be happy about that? But of course I'm not. I'm feeling rather frustrated over the low level of my Japanese and I kind of feel that after being interested in Japan for about 3 years, my level should be a bit higher. Then again, it's entirely my own fault, since I don't study and learn all of the wrong stuff by watching Japanese programs.
The good thing about that is that it gives me topics to talk about, but not being able to express myself the way I want to is incredebly frustrating. So, I've put my Japanese learing books and excercise books on my desk... let's see if I'll actually use them this time. lol.
The frist time after I met up with T (Y introduced us) I was feeling pretty confident. T: 'hatsuon iine', 'iya, iya, wakarimasu yo'
At least until Y told me her opinon about my Japanese. D: Yeah, I suck.
To be completly honest, one of the reasons for today's lack of fluent comunication was because I'm still kind of shell shocked by the internship in a retirement home the past 2 weeks. I'm kind of emotionally exhausted right now and my mind wouldn't mind it at all if I went into hikikomori mode for a while.
And what I actually shoudl be doing is going for a 'how to stand up for yourself' course, talk to the other students, write my paper and study. meh.