I Wish I Had a Moose

Two weeks, no posting. Sorry. Been busy.

My Japanese is good enough now that I am doing some actual translating for the manga scanslation group now. :D Huzzah! Between my busy schedule and the other translator's busy schedule, we're each doing part of the chapters at this point.

Drama club is a very time-consuming experience. We meet 5-6 days a week. Hako has been put off until the student festival, which makes me sad as I won't get to see it. We have picked the play we are putting on. Hirokawa wrote it, but the title wasn't finalized until like two days ago -- The Princesses, with the title actually being in English. Cinderella and Snow White get pulled into "The Place Where Stories are Born" because the story spirit in charge of making sure their tales come off without a hitch screwed up and there is actually only one prince to dish out to their two stories.

I didn't get a part in the play, but the auditioning was fun and interesting. Emphasis on interesting. (Kanji are hard.)

I have also joined the kadoubu (ikebana [Japanese traditional flower arranging] club). That's once a week, Thursday morning, and expensive. High-quality flowers grown for ikebana purposes. >< But I'm picking it up fast and enjoying every moment. I have some cell phone pictures of the two I have done so far.

Speaking of pictures, I have decided that I am gonna have to just put them all in zip files for downloading until I can get PHP on my web site or something.

Yesterday, for the Exchange Student Seminar class, I gave a report on Alaska. Woo. All the reports people have been giving for this class have been fairly boring (none of us really care about any of this), and mine wasn't much of an exception, though the Australians assure me it was nowhere near as boring as the report on the native peoples of the Russian province Tolia and Olga are from. Moose weren't originally in my report, but they came up in the discussion afterward (they can be over 6 feet taller than a speeding bullet, eat trees more powerfully than a locomotive, and leap the tallest 6-foot fences in a single bound). That was when one of the Australians (can't remember which) said, "I wish I had a moose." Apparently they are planning to make a book of all the funny things they say here this year, which I think is a great idea, and that is going in it.

I've taken to hanging out in the exchange students room more often now that Tom and Matt are around. There's no internet at the dorms, so they spend a lot of time there. I had forgotten just how much it rocks to have sracastic English-speakers to hang out with. :D

There are a few classes just for the exchange students. The last of those to have its time slot decided was Abe-sensei's reading comprehension class. Hiruta-sensei compiled all our class schedules onto one piece of paper and gave it to Abe-sensei so he could pick a slot for the class. The slot he originally picked overlapped with sadoubu, which made me sad, as I had told Hirutasensei that I had club then. As such, when Olga asked if we could switch it to Tuesday morning, I was all for that, and no one else objected, so we did.

Now, however, several weeks into semester, she wants to change the Japanese language class to Wednesday morning. Even if I was up for changing the schedule this late in the game (and I am not), if we change it to Wednesday morning I will have no day of the week that I can sleep in on. I am currently having to get up early on Saturday and Sunday for club activities. I overslept this morning, and realized that last time I got to actually sleep in was like two weeks ago. My body doesn't like going to bed at midnight and getting up at 7:30, even though that is plenty of sleep. So... Olga's gonna have to deal with the current schedule.

Realizations of the Period

1) I think that next time someone rephrases what they said into over-simple words when I just ask them to repeat something so I could catch it, I might blow up. If not next time, then sometime soon. :S
2) I hate credit cards.