Konbanwa

I survived the first week of school! But I'm nervous because four days wiped me out and there's still the rest of the semester to go. Almost all of my classes involve so much work it's overwhelming.

The Japanese course is intense and, so far, very scary. The professor is really nice and helpful, but there's so much to learn and a ton of memorization. The first day we learned about a dozen phrases and the hiragana writing system. Two out four classes per week are drill classes, where we meet with a different teacher and go over all the stuff we've learned so far. Today was the first of those. I don't think the teacher speaks much English so she was going on in Japanese while everyone else was giggling nervously. She's nice though and patient, so things went well. We were supposed to memorize the phrases and hiragana we learned on Wednesday. I only remembered a few of the phrases and got very lucky that she happened to call on me for the ones I knew. I'm making flashcards to study the hiragana characters. And I can totally say "It's nice to meet you" in Japanese now.

I'm going to be reading nonstop this semester. There's six novels to read for the Modern Novel class and the ancient Greek poems and stuff for the Gender in Antiquity class. So far I like Gender in Antiquity. The Modern Novel has a lot of philosophy in it and I don't know how well I'll do with that. American art is okay, but the professor is pretty disorganized. We haven't done anything in American Lit yet.

At least I managed not to get lost.