39 Days until Japan!

I can't believe reading week is drawing to a close and finals are just around the corner! I really should be starting that Latin paper that's due this upcoming Monday, but I figured a first post on this blog was necessary. 39 days from now I will be flying to Japan to begin the 8-week long Japanese language program with the Hokkaido International Foundation (HIF)!!!1!1one1! In case you can't tell, I'm pretty excited. After the program's over, I'll be staying an extra week to go and visit my dad's side of the family whom I've never actually met before. It should be a good time attempting to communicate with them via my very badly pieced together Vietnamese and Japanese.

I don't know what I'm most excited about--not spending the summer in Texas in 100 degree weather everyday, hanging out with everybody in Japan (Ashok and Elliot are both doing HIF too!), or the fact that Yale (and the immense generosity of the Richard U. Light Fellowship) is footing the entire bill for the trip (plus ISA funding!)---and studying Japanese of course, that part's pretty cool. I'm kind of a foreign language dork and I really like being able to be somewhat multilingual. Seeing as I'm a Classics major, it's nice to delve into languages that are actually spoken nowadays too.

We had our Japanese oral exam this morning actually, which I am very glad to be done with for good this semester. I crashed Silliman last night to study with Chris Moon and practice some fake dialogues, and as luck would have it, we were paired up for the exam today! I know I stumbled a bit over the prohibition structures, but all in all I think it went pretty well. We weren't exactly the most productive pair last night, what with the Settlers of Catan game and the Halo tournament and the rest of the chaos going on all around us that always occurs with that group of Silliboys, all of whom are extremely politically incorrect--but fun--people. Good times. I've really missed them all and spending time with Kevin, seeing as he, David, and I were practically attached at the hip last year. Kevin will actually be going to China with the Light Fellowship too, so he won't actually be all that far away this summer after all =).

In any case, it's about time I did more than just think about starting my paper and actually get on that. Plus, my laptop battery's about to go out. Peace.