This past weekend I stayed with my host family, the Andous. They didn't know much English so it was a challenge, but we did go out to eat twice with other IJST students' host families. Also, the Andous are tons of fun and took me to a dinosaur museum today and are just really nice people that I'm lucky to have gotten assigned to.

This week is kind of light since we don't have class on Tuesday (it's summer vacation at KIT and the school is closed Tuesday), but there's a big exam on Friday (and daily diary entries in Japanese as usual) so it's not a totally stress free week. However next weekend is the 4th of July and a big party is planned, so...Yeehaw!

-Scott

Last weekend we had a 4-day weekend (sat-tues) and so I went with a Rose kid to Osaka to meet a Japanese friend of his and then Tokyo where the friend lives. We stayed in Tokyo Monday and Tuesday and went all over and I bought tons of cool stuff. I think I might have some good pictures but I'm probably too busy to post them right now. This next weekend I'm going to be staying with a host family. I met my host mom last weekend and she was so nice and later she sent me an email where she called me Scott-kun which made me smile. OK homework time.

-Scott

Even though I’ve just met all of the American students, I feel like I know them well enough to say that a lot seem to be getting more irritable than usual. There are only a couple that I’ve talked to that annoy me just by the way they talk, but it seems that a lot of other people are annoyed (and much more so than me) by quite a few people. I think I too am starting to get irritated a little easier, although usually I can keep my cool when provoked. Why the irritability? Since I’ve been at Rose for four years, I’m used to having to work hard and such, so that doesn’t bother me. It’s more the frustration of having things to communicate and not being able to do so well. Especially for me as a first year Japanese student I find it difficult to speak and listen with my limited vocabulary. I think this is probably a reason for the tension in others too. There’s also interpersonal tension created by the different levels of Japanese speakers. While we all want to learn, we don’t want to look foolish and especially don’t want to be made to look foolish by (sometimes younger/socially lower) peers. You have to have such delicate tact sometimes when trying to communicate with peers in a foreign language. Being that most of the people I hang out with are engineers, I feel they lack that tact. I probably do too, but I try to avoid correcting people altogether since I don’t think it’s part of my role as a peer (except when talking to Japanese people) and more often it’s me who needs correcting.

WOTD: ganbatte- it's like "do your best" or "work hard" or "go for it" or I've heard one person translate it as "good luck," and it is what one of my Japanese friends said to me tonight after we talked about the difficulties I was having with Japanese

-Scott

Just wanted to say that I'll be going to Anamizu for the next couple of days so I'll be not posting/out of touch with the back home world but I probably won't be dead so...

WOTD: atatakakunakatta- was not hot, as in weather...atatakai is hot and this is the past negative form...our teacher makes us say each of 4 forms in the time of about a heartbeat...so that's atatakai atatakakatta atatakakunai atatakakunakatta (present past negative neg/past)(a language where the grammatical functions are glued onto the words is called agglutinative fyi)...in 4 heartbeats...

-Scott

I just graduated from Rose-Hulman with my Master's of Electrical and Computer Engeering and am studying in Kanazawa, Japan until July 18. After that I will be working for Green Hills Software in Santa Barbara, CA. This picture is of Moench Hall, an interesting building at Rose.

6/29/08- IJST Teachers



6/29/08- Me and the Andous, my host family



6/29/08- Yuka and Nick, who I went with to Osaka and Tokyo

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