Immortal Technique -- The Poverty of Philosophy

I also wanted to wish Merry Christmas to everyone, but I ran across this video by a rapper me and my friends listen to a lot, and he really has a LOT to say and listen to what he has to say, he really has a point, watch this. Happy Holidays.

AND IT HAS BEGUN!

Today marks the first day of Christmas break!... Please, all 0 of my readers, keep the applause down. Not only is this important in the fact that:
1. I get sleep
2. I get sleep
3. I get sleep
but also in the fact that I have no homework, which means a lot of free time to engulf myself into the language books sitting around the house and actually use them instead of making myself feel good by staring at the covers. I actually just got 5 books for Christmas and my mom is willing to let me start reading one or two early so I think I might get a little head start on them. Out of the 5 books, 3 are Portuguese and 2 are Japanese, and I'll just list them:

Random House Portuguese Pocket Dictionary
Dom Casmurro(Brazilian)
O Cortiço(Brazilian)
Japanese in Mangaland 1(Sort of a starter book, will explain further down)
Japanese in Mangaland Workbook

I am going to be at 1225 kanji by the time this night is over in Remembering the Kanji, leaving me with 812 to go. For all of you who want to study Japanese, I am sorry, but, Kanji are hell. There just is no other way to sugarcoat it. They are just hell. I hate them. I want to just get through these 815 and be done. Of course, once I get through, I will still be reviewing them with Mnemosyne, so I don't plan to forget them, but I don't feel like writing the confusing kanji for admonish or looking up the definition for what a decameron is, or trying to find out what a monme is(which isn't even on dictionary.com by the way). I really want to just blow past these kanji in the next couple of days and move on to the other resources sitting in my house. The kanji have forced me to put Assimil, Japanese in Mangaland, The Hirigana and Katakana writing systems, learning another language, and school all on hold, so I am just ready to get them past me and start enjoying languages again.

So, on to what Japanese in Mangaland is. Japanese in Mangaland is basically a 300 pg. semi-textbook that self-teaches you basic grammar, sentences, vocabulary, and kanji, all through manga cartoons. It was not very expensive, $17, you can probably but it cheaper if you really tried hard, I had to get it quickly while my mom was in a good mood, so money wasn't really the issue for me I guess, but if you think that is still too much money, well, you can contact me and I can discuss other ways you can go about finding materials. I am actually in the mood to do a bunch of kanji so I think I might go do like 100 or something and be angry tommorow when I open Mnemosyne and have to review about 300, but I guess I'll have time. I'm going to try and post for Christmas Eve, but if not, Merry Christmas everybody and Happy Kwanzaa!

Not much progress at all

What a week, what a week, what a week. I start off the week on a good note and end it on a bad one. If I haven't already talked about it on here(I never remember what I post on here), I have been experiencing lots of problems with migraines behind my right eye, and it has made me miss lots of school and time. It is also extremely painful and something I would rather not experience. It sort of makes me want to become a neurologist when I get older. Friday, I had to miss another day of school and got bored so I went online to research the migraines on my own a little bit, and fount a community online of people who are experiencing the same thing as me on livejournal. I made an account, posted, and amazingly enough, got 6 comments back by the end of today, all with tips on where to look next for help. What a good Christmas gift huh? I also haven't progressed much further in japanese than when I last posted, it seems the closer you get, the harder it gets to finish, but I WILL finish by time the book needs to be renewed at the library by January 8 or something, because it's getting annoying. I've lost weight though! And I believe I posted the link to it on the link bar to the side, just ignore all the ads at the top and scroll down, and you will see a great meal plan that I have been following closely, and it has helped me lose 10 lb. in a week so far, and if I keep this up to May, I will be a different person. Until then, peace.

At a little milestone

Just wanted to post because I past a few milestones these past couple of days. Since I am currently at school, time is key, so this post will be much shorter than it usually would be. But anyways, I've reached a little over 1000 kanji and have about 1030 to go, and I've ordered 5 books, 3 Portuguese, 2 Japanese, for Christmas. Peace.

A trip to Virginia Tech and a little bit of a set back

I haven't been able to post for I believe another week as I have had possibly the busiest week of my life. I have never had so much work in my life, talk about frustrating. I did get some good things out of it though. I am reading a good book, Song of Solomon, which I really enjoy, and starting a really good diet, which I will put a link to right after I post this, got back to lifting weights, which feels good, and I got to lift weights. Sadly, I got a little behind in my Japanese but I believe I still will be done by New Years and I hope by saying that I won't get lazy and slack off. Looking at if I finish off my work for tonight, I will have done 981 kanji, and will have 1061 left, just about halfway there, which really feels good. I have done about 400 in about 3 weeks or so, maybe it was 2 weeks I am not sure, but I want to just get it done and start with the fun stuff. As with Portuguese, I am going to ask for some books and a monolingual dictionary for xmas(I feel like I put that in my last post) and that will help me with reading, and as for speaking? I am not sure what I can buy for that that is cheap, I think just talking with native speakers is enough.

But on to the Virginia Tech Trip. It was a 2 and a half hour trip that I spent mostly sleeping through down and back(off and on, my knees were killing me). When we got off, we walked a little ways and went into a little room where we were offered a bunch of donuts and water, and then went into an auditorium. There my peers presented their research on Arabidopsis thaliana, and I was going to present mine as well but my partner woke up late and missed the bus. When our turn was up, the teacher told us to come up anyway, and we had no powerpoint, paper, data, graphs, nothing. So we just spoke for about 3 minutes just from memory, and we somehow pulled through roughly. I can't remember the exact order of everything else we did, but we also got a chance to see other Tech seniors' research on Arabidopsis genes using a bunch of methods and stuff, and I barely remember the terminology they used. If I was to describe Virginia Tech, I would say that it has a LOT of good people, and good technology, but it was kind of ugly, and it was in the middle of nowhere. Plus, of course, we can only be so close because they beat UVA in football right??