This week has been interesting as far as I can tell. Classes I don't think will be so bad, at least not my 'culture' classes. My language class(es) are moving along quickly. We're up to making sort of complicated sentences.

Let's see, Monday started out with a Vocab Quiz. I made 15/15 so there were no goof ups, and then we worked on the particles, の、は (this is actually the character for 'ha' but when standing alone it is read as 'wa'), も, andか。

Let's see if I can give you what は is. は is SORTA like the verb 'is' as when you say the sentence 'Watashi wa Carolyn desu' (私はキャロリンです。). You're linking the word Watashi meaning 'I' to for me, my name. The word desu is more like an affirmative. I've also heard that desu can be seen like the English verb 'to be' but 'is' is a verb of the verb 'to be.' So… I'm going to go with desu being an affirmation word because my sensei said so. (And if you haven't noticed I figured out how to get my computer to type in Japanese! YAY!)

の is a particle you use for those phrases needing the word 'of'. So if I wanted to say the Book of Japanese I would actually type 'nihongo no hon.' （にほんごのほん）Nihongo means Japanese language and hon means book, so you're actually saying Japanese of book. But for the Japanese they refer to things from biggest to smallest, and since the Japanese language is the 'larger' thought/subject you say the language first.Or when I say I'm a student at Georgia Southern, I would say watashi wa Georgia Southern Daigaku no Gakusei desu, (私はギオリギアソーザン大学の学生です。Daigaku = university, Gakusei = Student). And it only gets more complicated from there since you could say Carolyn's Japanese Book or Carolyn's Mother's Japanese book. All would be strung together with a series of 'no's. Yeaaah. FUN STUFF.

か denotes uncertainty, so if you add it at the end of a sentence you're probably asking a question. Easy one to remember.

もis used in place of は when the subject of a previous sentence is the same as the first. Like if you were to say 'Carolyn is American. Amanda is also American;' もis the equivalent of 'is also.' So, not to difficult.

And that my friends, is basically Monday-Wednesday language lessons, reading and speaking with these particular particles in our sentences. My other Monday classes were, Japanese Business with the ONLY non Japanese professor, O'Brien. Now not to sound mean or anything, but this man is a bit HARSH. He comes off as a very haughty person, not considering he probably has a few PHD's and the like, he probably has good reason to have this attitude, but it makes you wonder whether or not you want to take his class. But I've learned from several 'sarcastic' professors that more often than not that make some of the best professors, mainly because they're not afraid of the truth. And then, there was Japanese Pop Culture through media. OMG! This looks like it's going to be an amazing class. I can't wait to get into things more in the future and tell you about it.

Tuesday was Mapping Culture. Another Fun class, we'll be going on 'excursions' in this class as well so MORE PICTURES! XD Sensei wants to help us see places and 'map' the ideas of that place or time to that place. It looks to be one of those guided self discovery classes so I'm excited.

Wednesday was a busy day, language in the morning and then, Japanese Tourism, I'm still not sure how I feel about the class, but I've got to stick with it unfortunately. Japan's Economic Power is an interesting class simply because my sensei is a retired business man who worked for the Brother Corp. for over 30 years. He's tying his experience with his company with how Japan as an economic power grew through the 70's, 80's and 90's. I personally really like Hiroshi-sensei; he has a very welcoming personality so you feel very comfortable with him. We'll also be taking a trip to a Brother Corp. business with his class. I unfortunately had to skip Kudo (archery) club because Thursday I had TWO quizzes. One over a NEW set of Vocab words and then a lesson quiz over the grammar we had been going over for the past three days. So Wed. night I studied until like 11ish? I honestly couldn't get some words to stick, like Chair and desk. You'd think THOSE words would be easy… but they aren't. And you know what gets me. For the most part, the Japanese language is easy to spell, you sound it out and you write the symbols and easy spelling, but when you start spelling ENGLISH words in JAPANESE I start to get concerned. I am notorious for my bad spelling in English, so it only stands that my spelling is going to get WORSE when I have to BUTCHER the English words to Japanese. But somehow I managed to get all (but one) 'English' words right and I missed, Desk, Car and computer.For computer instead of the 'bi' symbol I wrote 'bu'. And I missed the other two because I got the 'vowel 'sounds wrong. I don't feel like explaining it because that would be ANOTHER long language explanation. But know it's just stupid stuff. And on my grammar quiz I didn't add the tick to 'ka' for a word so instead of using the hiragana for 'ka' (か) I wrote the katakana 'ka' (カ) which made it WRONG. I would have had a perfect score otherwise (11/12 points). I was so angry!

The last class of the week was Language and Society and we talked more on 'in-groupness' verses 'out-groupness' and how the Japanese language reflect that.

TODAY! However we went to Seto city to visit a famous pottery studio, and WE GOT TO MAKE our own pottery. I was like a kid in a candy store at getting to sit at a pottery wheel and make my own pot/bowl/thing. It's even going to have our signature on it; I wrote my name in Katakana which is キャロリン. The master of the studio is the 12th master since his family started the studio during the Edo period which is when the Tokogawa Shogunate ruled over Japan. His family was commissioned by the Shogun to make pottery for the tea ceremonies in the castles. All of the pottery is made with natural elements so even the pigments used in panting or glazing is natural and can be found in nature. It's amazing what this man and his apprentices can do. (HEY MOM I GOT A PICTURE OF ME?!)

Anyway after tomorrow's adventure to Sekae to go to the arcade I will probably be studious and get to working on my NEW set of vocabulary since I have yet ANOTHER vocab quiz. Next weekend I don't have an excursions but I will have a lecture for the Kabuki show the week AFTER next. Hopefully I didn't bore you with my language drabble, and until next week thank you all for your love and support!!!

Carolyn

(I'll have pictures uploaded when I can get more than a snippet of internet and it's not 3am in the morning)