On language

Well, it's been nearly a month (!!) since I got back from Japan, and I haven't mentioned it at all, so I figured I could start now. :)

I've been noticing that I am mixing up Hawaiian and Japanese (I get sentences like 'ke poho ga aru?') in inopportune moments. Luckily, it hasn't mucked up my testing yet, but trying to think fast in conversations is a bit more strained. Japanese is more natural for me, but Hawaiian is a more intense class... and it's also more fun. I really like my classmates.

Anyway, back to Nanzan. The main purpose of the GP program that did the exchange was to have Nanzan students do a joint research project with Hawaii students, but conduct everything in English! My buddies Miki and Eri were both into food, so that was our research topic, and in Nanzan we gave our presentation that we have been working on since about July, so that was pretty huge.

Not a lot of people were in the audience, BUT there was a television cameraman, which was rather intimidating. We went first and were relaxing during the other 4 presentations when Aya (the wonderful woman in charge) asked me if I would mind doing an interview with the cameraman.

In Japanese.

I managed two complete sentences in hopefully not terribly impolite Japanese on camera, on jet lag, and without falling over!

It was an achievement!

The language in general was interesting, since I don't get a lot of opportunities to talk outside of class. Having taught myself a lot of my Japanese, I love casual speech, slang, dialects, etc., so after visiting with Nagoya and hanging out with a lot of other girls my own age, speaking very casually, it's harder for me to switch back into the formal setting of our classroom. (For those who don't know, Japanese has two distinct styles of speaking - polite and casual. There's about a bazillion other levels of formality, but I like to think of them as two.) As if the class wasn't hard enough already...

Aside from that, my interactions with all the Nanzan ESL students has made me a lot more excited for my ESL tutoring job!

But I have just realized that having two jobs could be why my classes have seemed a lot harder. That and being gone for a week, being sick for a week, deciding not to study because it was my birthday...

Speaking of birthday, it was fun. We went to Black and White Night, a festival-type thing downtown, and got Thai food and drank... tea. I am 21 now, but I like tea. :) And there were a lot of cupcakes, so I was happy.

I've been noticing that I haven't been taking very many pictures in Hilo at all. I take a lot of food pictures, though.

Okay, that's all I have... until I think of something else that's interesting to blog about. Now back to trying to figure out next semester's classes... it shouldn't be this hard, there aren't that many to choose from anymore.

A hui hou!