So I know I’ve done a sucky job at keeping this updated… But orientation is FINALLY over and I’ve started classes!! Well yay for the orientation part being over… ugh, classes. I’m taking 4 classes for the semester, which is weird because they’re 14 week terms – not the usual 10 like I’m used to. Whatevs, I’m happy with all of my classes =) I’m taking a religion class (I know, like WHAT?) titled ‘Religion, Culture, and Society,’ an international business class titled ‘Economic Policy, and a history class titled ‘Development of Japanese Civilization.’ The one I’m most surprised about is the religion class. It’s more or less about how religion is interpreted in society, especially within the context of Japanese culture. It’s interesting taking classes with both other exchange/international transfer students, and Japanese people.
The classes are all taught in English, besides my Japanese language course of course, but it’s been pretty cool to see the different teaching styles and such. Today was only my 3rd day of class, but yea fml for my Japanese… Thursday was our 1st day and we had a quiz on Friday. And I had another one today. Oh, and btw’s I have another one tomorrow. I guess I’d rather have like little mini-quizzes than one HUGE test that counts for a large percentage of my grade, but ugh…
I got placed into Japanese 3 though… I seriously thought I had failed the placement test though. Like I couldn’t get a couple of the kanji in the ‘beginners’ section and my mini-essay for the writing portion was SO dumb. They asked to write about the difficulties of learning a foreign language and how you have learned to deal with them. I knew I couldn’t compose something like I would be able to in English, but I got a good like 2-ish paragraphs out. The person reading it must have been like WTF though, because I basically wrote this:
“I went on a summer program to Nagoya once and they made learning fun. Making learning fun is a sure way to get people to want to learn a foreign language. That program made it easy for people to learn and I had a good time.”
I stretched it out as best as I could, but yea… I can only imagine what the grader was thinking while she was reading it haha. I mean I’m happy I got placed into a good level, and class has been going well so far. The only thing I’m like intimidated by is the kanji (characters) because that is SO my weakness.
But I’ve gotten to meet new people, both Japanese and other international peoples. I joined a ‘circle’ (club) called SISEC, which is an acronym for ‘Sophia International Speaking English Club’ (I think that’s what it stands for… not sure… But yea, they had a Welcome Party last night at a restaurant and it was super fun! It was at Ninja Izakaya, which may or may not be affiliated with the Ninja restaurant in New York City, but it was pretty cool nonetheless. I wrote a blog post about ‘group culture’ for the Drexel blog, so maybe I’ll just copy and paste that entry later. So either check that out if you really really really want to read it or just be on the alert for a new post soon. I promise to try and be better about updating since orientation is over. <3
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