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Friday, December 21, 2007

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!

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