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??

What a week

This is now officially my 6th post, but it's coming a little later than I planned on it being. It has been a hectic week due to a lot of work being due, plus having a couple health problems hinder me so I haven't been able to keep up with by blog this week. But I did make a little progress, especially in my Japanese. I was unable to do much work, but when I was fine I put in a lot of work into memorizing more kanji and I am currently up to 751 characters, and I have been counting down everyday to the final character in the book, so I now have 1291 characters left, which actually surprises me and motivates me to get them done. I've been trying to do about 50 a day which would get me to 1300 in 26 days, just in time for Christmas! Now realizing that my goal would be reached right around my day, I have proposed to finish this book and my 2042 kanji by Christmas Day, a hefty proposal but definitely a possible one. I know it won't be easy, but I'm fine with that and I am ready to do it. Memorizing the kanji usually takes me about an hour, which is a long time, but I usually have a lot of time on me, especially on the weekend, so I will probably step up the input on the weekend to maybe 80 and maybe drop the load down to 40 during the week, but always try and do 50 if I can. Now, coming into what I am about to say, I understand I am dealing with enough languages as is and adding yet another could really be too much, but at this point in my language learning "career," I find it quite easy to handle multiple languages, I never get confused except for the occasional pause when I am talking to people in different languages at once, or, I must admit, I have some situations where I am not sure how to say something in English! I am kind of worried, my brain is starting to think moreso in Portuguese or French than English and I have to say things aloud to myself a couple times before I am sure it is right. But, I don't really care, I'm not planning on being an English major. Now, what I was going to say was, I think I might try to pick up Russian or German, or maybe both. I might have mentioned it in one of my earlier posts, or on my blog before I changed it around and lost it, but I did do a little bit of German study but I didn't keep it up just because of loss of interest and tutor :). As with Russian, I've ran by PLENTY of materials I could use to teach myself Russian and I think I am pretty good at putting together a curriculum for myself. As with Portuguese, I have been talking much more in Portuguese and I think once I go back over my conjugations I will be at an intermediate level of Portuguese, I think at this point it's basically just a matter of learning vocabulary and working on my speaking/listening. My speaking is decent, I sort of developed a strange brazilian accent, I was talking to someone and I forget which region of Brazil, but I am kind of happy that I don't sound like an English speaker completely. But the thing I have to work on is just putting together sentences and sounding smooth when I talk. Listening is just really hard because Brazilians talk SOOOO fast. I can understand a little bit because I just take keywords and put them together and figure it out, but I want to be able to understand everything. Due to lack of time as always, I have to end it here but I will try to post again later, 1~

LIL KEKE ft. BIRDMAN - IM A G (UNCENSORED MUSIC VIDEO)

Just wanted to add a lil bit of music to my blog.

And if anyone knows how to put videos on the side bar, please let me know.

Starting anew after Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a good weekend like I did. It was VERY nice having 5 days off and thankfully I have another day tommorow off before break ends. It is also another day where I have allowed myself to get behind in my Japanese. As I think I mentioned before, I'm using the Reviewing the Kanji website to review the Japanese kanji I have been memorizing everyday(I have to be honest, I haven't been doing it every day, or anywhere near there). But I am happy that I have finally reached the 600 kanji mark and I only have about 1600 to go. I only have to repeat what I've been doing since August and I'll almost be done! I also decided to go ahead and buy Remembering the Kana, which is a book also by James Heisig(author of Remembering the Kanji, the book I am using for the kanji), and Remembering the Kana is a book that helps you to memorize the 2 syllabaries of Japanese. The Syllabaries in Japanese are not NEARLY as hard as memorizing the Kanji characters but still a little bit of a challenge. As for my Portuguese studies, I think I am starting to notice a little bit of improvement in the speaking and listening department, as I have been talking a little bit more and I have noticed that I am starting to develop a more native accent while speaking. I think my trip to Brazil will really be a good experience and I hope the work I am putting in now pays off.

Japanese

This is the continuation of my last post on how I am going about learning languages. This is probably going to be very short. So, what I do with Japanese. What I did was I read up on what Japanese consisted of, which is this: 3 writing systems, a complex sentence structure, and the fact that I would have learn a bunch of vocab. This obviously wasn't a very nice thing to hear for anyone who wants to learn anything, it means it's going to be a lot of work. But I saw it as a chance for me to prove to myself that I could do anything I set my mind to. So I decided to learn it. I first decided to use Assimil, which is sort of like Pimsleur(if anyone knows what that is), it basically gives you some materials(a book and CD's) and takes you through each lesson, and you try to memorize the sentences pretty much, or at least listen to the tapes while going through them in the book until you understand what each sentence means orally. I didn't just do a good job of explaining it, but if you want to find more just Google it and you will find all the information you need. In conjunction with Assimil, I stopped by the UVA library and checked out a book titled Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig. Basically it is a book that helps you develop a method of memorizing all 2,200 kanji(the hardest of all the writing systems and the most necessary) that I high school student would need to know to graduate in Japan. I knew it was going to be hard but I didn't care so I went right into it, and hit a huge bump. I realized once school started I would never have any time to do all this stuff as well as work on my other languages each night, so I decided to just use Remembering the Kanji and finish it then move on to other things. If you are wondering how well I am doing, I am currently at 641, so I have about 1,559 remaining, which actually is surprising since I have to be honest, I haven't been doing the 25 I planned on doing each night or I would have been done by now. But I have fount a some of my old determination in me so I have been working on it hard and if I can suck it up and get at it I will be done by New Year's, which would be nice. And to all the readers, leave me comments on how my blog has been so far please!