冬休みがチャレンジ: Progress 4

I've been wanting to post this for awhile.
The first week of January I went to a museum with my older brothers.
I took the chance of the one hour ride to study.
I studied vocab and grammar.
I was pretty surprised I could focus when my brother blasts music to the max in his car.

During my lesson I was more open to speaking,
but I still stuck to phrases I'm too comfortable with.

I added more vocab to my memo.
For some reason 顎、同僚、and 煩わしい have in planted in my brain from studying.
I think it's because it's from practicing speaking and not from my textbook vocab list.
I've been wanting to download the Anki app to my iTouch so I can carry my Anki decks with me,
but it's a tad expensive. Till I have the money for it I downloaded a SRS ap called iAnki.
It's not as great as Anki, but it's the best SRS app I've used so far.
(I've used some other ones so far that were terrible!)

Also, my Darling is a Foreigner DVD and manga arrived. I really enjoyed watching the movie.
The male character is a language otaku, so I can relate to him a lot. I got the book in bilingual form.
It's too advanced for me I think. First I'm reading it in English for pleasure, and then I'll be using it
in my Japanese lessons as my reading piece.
So much fun!

I'm slightly bothered because my school is starting a week earlier than I thought.
So my challenge will be ending this Thursday.
I think I'll have to make a new challenge for Spring semester.

How is your challenge going?

P.S Please comment if you have any ideas on how I can improve my blog.

Total Study Time for 2011

I began in the end of 2010 an idea to record exactly how long I study.
I wanted to see how well (or how bad) I use my time.
I started off well into 2011... buuuut like many of us I quickly lost steam.

I either was too busy with school or working too much.
I didn't have much me-time either.
I was stressed.
I was tired.
I only studied for 1,952min=1day, 8 hours, 32min.

One obstacle this year that came up that put me back was
that I was honestly scared of continuing with my Japanese studies.
I'm on that part of the road between beginner and intermediate.
I began the next textbook of the series I use.
Seeing the first few chapters put me in doubt.
And that doubt made me wonder if I liked learning Japanese anymore.

I also had two very good Japanese friends move away.
One was my teacher. Whom had been teaching me since junior year of
high school. I saw her every week for my lessons and are very close.
Japanese made me think of her and my friend. It made me sad.

Japanese stopped being fun.

I gave up my dream of ever going to Japan.

Thankfully, I started to really miss Japanese.
I missed the sound, the culture, the people, the media.
I realized that I still do really love it and it makes me so happy.
I couldn't wait for my finals to be over so I could cram Japanese-time.

I started thinking of ways I could help myself. Try new things.
(You can see in my Winter Challenge posts).

Pushing myself.

Challenging myself.

Loving it.

So instead of frowning at my low study time I'm
excited to beat it. I have new study tools.
 I have a new Japanese teacher whom I'm
very excited studying with, and growing a friendship.
I have specific goals in mind this year to meet.

I'm getting up, dusting myself off, and continuing on.

Hope you will also not feel discouraged by a disappointing year,
and instead learn from it. Here's to a successful 2012!