ひらがなとカタカナと漢字だ
I was going to blog more last time, but I just didn't feel like it when it came to it.
Anyway. Today, no fog. I could see the mountains all around and it didn't feel like we were living on a floating island, high above the skies anymore.
I think that finally everything is getting like it should be. I found out that I can take the history course here and get the credits back at home. I found a really interesting course that I want to take that has a (small) possibility to be accepted by my home university too. It's called Social Theory. It's about social theory. I took it because I want to take a course called Cultural Anthropology. That one is the one I'm really interested in. I just have to hope that they will teach it during spring semester, because I can't take it now. Need Social Theory first.
The first week of school is over. Some classes are more interesting than others and some classes won't be recognized by HÍ (Háskóli Íslands = University of Iceland). Like my Special Lecture (Language and Culture)EA. Also known as Visual Something Something. It has nothing to to with Japan. I thought it might be, because it's called Language and Culture, but as far as I can see, it's about pictures, how they came to be and what they represent and mean to us in our culture. Nothing about language really. Not yet.
But the teacher is great.
Japanese class. Well. First we were made to take a placement test. I got into Foundation III and Nika into Foundation II. As it turned out that Nika had been placed in the wrong class, she was moved upward to Foundation III, with me. (I was afraid that I would have to move down to Foundation II, man am I glad :D) But it's still easy. We begin at the beginning. To make sure that everybody really knows and as review. We are going really fast. We have already had one kanji quiz from chapters 1 and 2, and there will be another quiz from chapters 3 and 4 on monday. We will finish chapter 8 (where I will no longer know all the kanji characters) in three weeks. That is fast. By the way, kanji is one of the Japanese "alphabets". It's the one that looks just like Chinese. It looks so much like Chinese because the Japanese learned it from the Chinese. They just had to adjust their writing system a little to make it fit their language. Chinese is interestingly simple, I'm told. They have no past or future tense, for one. They say something like 'me Solveig movie yesterday', instead of 'Yesteryday, me and Chen went to the movies together'. Wow. So they have this kanji for ME and (weird combination of)kanji for SOLVEIG and kanji for MOVIE and kanji for YESTERDAY, that they line up together. Easy. But the Japanese language is different. They have tenses and small words comparable to the English 'that' and 'who' and 'the' . So the kanji system is really too simple for the Japanese language. What to do, what to do. Dou suru, dou suru.
'Oh, I know!'
'Ah, wakatta!'
'Let's invent two more alphabets and use them too!'
'hiragana to katakana wo tsukurimashou!'
'Let's make hiragana and katakana!'
So now they write a kanji for ME, then use hiragana to represent the topic of the sentence, then put a katakana for the name SOLVEIG, then place a hiragana for AND, and use both kanji and hiragana to represent TOGETHER, then kanji for MOVIE, then hiragana for TO, then kanji for the verb to GO, and hiragana to represent the past tense of that verb. me, Solveig and together movie to went. 私はソルヴェイと一緒に映画館に行きました。
I hope you can read that. And oh yea, that is my name in Japanese. Soruvei. People keep telling me to get a nickname.
So, classes are fun. Except for Contemporary Japanese Economics. That's just not my thing. But I have to take it. It's about Japan.
I went to tae-kwon-do practice today. It was fun. It was really great. Finally some action. Well, no fighting though. There's a festival coming up, and the tae-kwon-do-club will have a show, so they were practicing a dance, really. But it was fun. I haven't moved my butt since I came here. I've been a very active in buying from vending machines. Cookies, juice, danish-pastry, instant noodles, coffee, ice-cream, yogurt... Everything really. And we can't get a card to the gym unless we go to the tour first, but there hasn't been any tour since we came here, and wont' be until the 10th.
I saw a poster advertising Japanese swordsmanship...
Tomorrow I'm going to Nagasaki. You know that city, don't you? Well, it's also on Kyushu island, just like Beppu! Takes four hours by bus from Beppu Train Station. Somewhat faster if we just go by train. One of my good fellow Japanese students (totally European) apparently knows a bunch of people there. So we get a free guide! Yay! There's a handful of us going, if even that, and we're going to stay over night. Las bus to APU from Beppu Train Station leaves at 21:40. We don't want to come back quite that early, specially with the time it takes to get between cities.
Ok, I was going to talk about my room and stuff. What the school looks like and friends and stuff, but now I'm too tired. It's midnight and we're going to get an early start tomorrow. We want to be there before noon if possible.
I'm going to bed now, and dream about the people that I miss from home. I have already dreamt about Vala. You came here, knocked on my door and woke me up, and just waltzed into my room like there was nothing to it. Then I dreamed about my aunt Adda, because she commented on my blog. She was happy, I was happy. I dreamed that I was back home and I dreamed my whole family big-big. sister, brothers, mom, dad, stepmom, grandmothers, and grandfather... aunts and cousins I think too...
Good night people, oyasuminasai!
Anyway. Today, no fog. I could see the mountains all around and it didn't feel like we were living on a floating island, high above the skies anymore.
I think that finally everything is getting like it should be. I found out that I can take the history course here and get the credits back at home. I found a really interesting course that I want to take that has a (small) possibility to be accepted by my home university too. It's called Social Theory. It's about social theory. I took it because I want to take a course called Cultural Anthropology. That one is the one I'm really interested in. I just have to hope that they will teach it during spring semester, because I can't take it now. Need Social Theory first.
The first week of school is over. Some classes are more interesting than others and some classes won't be recognized by HÍ (Háskóli Íslands = University of Iceland). Like my Special Lecture (Language and Culture)EA. Also known as Visual Something Something. It has nothing to to with Japan. I thought it might be, because it's called Language and Culture, but as far as I can see, it's about pictures, how they came to be and what they represent and mean to us in our culture. Nothing about language really. Not yet.
But the teacher is great.
Japanese class. Well. First we were made to take a placement test. I got into Foundation III and Nika into Foundation II. As it turned out that Nika had been placed in the wrong class, she was moved upward to Foundation III, with me. (I was afraid that I would have to move down to Foundation II, man am I glad :D) But it's still easy. We begin at the beginning. To make sure that everybody really knows and as review. We are going really fast. We have already had one kanji quiz from chapters 1 and 2, and there will be another quiz from chapters 3 and 4 on monday. We will finish chapter 8 (where I will no longer know all the kanji characters) in three weeks. That is fast. By the way, kanji is one of the Japanese "alphabets". It's the one that looks just like Chinese. It looks so much like Chinese because the Japanese learned it from the Chinese. They just had to adjust their writing system a little to make it fit their language. Chinese is interestingly simple, I'm told. They have no past or future tense, for one. They say something like 'me Solveig movie yesterday', instead of 'Yesteryday, me and Chen went to the movies together'. Wow. So they have this kanji for ME and (weird combination of)kanji for SOLVEIG and kanji for MOVIE and kanji for YESTERDAY, that they line up together. Easy. But the Japanese language is different. They have tenses and small words comparable to the English 'that' and 'who' and 'the' . So the kanji system is really too simple for the Japanese language. What to do, what to do. Dou suru, dou suru.
'Oh, I know!'
'Ah, wakatta!'
'Let's invent two more alphabets and use them too!'
'hiragana to katakana wo tsukurimashou!'
'Let's make hiragana and katakana!'
So now they write a kanji for ME, then use hiragana to represent the topic of the sentence, then put a katakana for the name SOLVEIG, then place a hiragana for AND, and use both kanji and hiragana to represent TOGETHER, then kanji for MOVIE, then hiragana for TO, then kanji for the verb to GO, and hiragana to represent the past tense of that verb. me, Solveig and together movie to went. 私はソルヴェイと一緒に映画館に行きました。
I hope you can read that. And oh yea, that is my name in Japanese. Soruvei. People keep telling me to get a nickname.
So, classes are fun. Except for Contemporary Japanese Economics. That's just not my thing. But I have to take it. It's about Japan.
I went to tae-kwon-do practice today. It was fun. It was really great. Finally some action. Well, no fighting though. There's a festival coming up, and the tae-kwon-do-club will have a show, so they were practicing a dance, really. But it was fun. I haven't moved my butt since I came here. I've been a very active in buying from vending machines. Cookies, juice, danish-pastry, instant noodles, coffee, ice-cream, yogurt... Everything really. And we can't get a card to the gym unless we go to the tour first, but there hasn't been any tour since we came here, and wont' be until the 10th.
I saw a poster advertising Japanese swordsmanship...
Tomorrow I'm going to Nagasaki. You know that city, don't you? Well, it's also on Kyushu island, just like Beppu! Takes four hours by bus from Beppu Train Station. Somewhat faster if we just go by train. One of my good fellow Japanese students (totally European) apparently knows a bunch of people there. So we get a free guide! Yay! There's a handful of us going, if even that, and we're going to stay over night. Las bus to APU from Beppu Train Station leaves at 21:40. We don't want to come back quite that early, specially with the time it takes to get between cities.
Ok, I was going to talk about my room and stuff. What the school looks like and friends and stuff, but now I'm too tired. It's midnight and we're going to get an early start tomorrow. We want to be there before noon if possible.
I'm going to bed now, and dream about the people that I miss from home. I have already dreamt about Vala. You came here, knocked on my door and woke me up, and just waltzed into my room like there was nothing to it. Then I dreamed about my aunt Adda, because she commented on my blog. She was happy, I was happy. I dreamed that I was back home and I dreamed my whole family big-big. sister, brothers, mom, dad, stepmom, grandmothers, and grandfather... aunts and cousins I think too...
Good night people, oyasuminasai!
posted by Solveig | Friday, October 05, 2007
6 Comments:
Blessuð hafðu ekki of miklar áhyggjur af því hvort HÍ metur öll námskeiðin þín. Heimurinn snýst ekki um þessa hugvísindadeild. Lærðu það sem þig langar og skemmtu þér vel með góðu fólki!
Sammála síðasta ræðumanni ^^
Og gott að þú sért farinn að sjá þetta í bjartara ljósi.
Væri snilld að sjá myndir!
Japanese swordsmanship! Boy is that cool! Er fólk byrjað að kommenta á íslensku, jæja. Gaman að fá smá innsýn á málið hjá þér! Og farðu endilega að prufa sjálfsalana, og hegða þér eins og innfædd hehehe. Ég á vonandi eftir að kíkja við einhverntíman eins og Vala í draumnum þínum. Ég ætla að koma í heimsókn!!! :)
My, you sure make Japanese sound complicated. And it's so simple, really! :P
Ég skal koma áfram í draumana til þín, ef þú kemur í mína. :D Skorri: Solveig á ekki myndavél, hún tekur ekki myndir... ég hef séð um þá hlið hingað til ;) Vonandi verður breyting á. Eða þú getur látið Niku taka myndir og sent okkur ;)
Gaman að heyra að þú sért að skemmta þér svona vel, en ég verð að vera sammála fyrri ræðumönnum og segja þér að hafa ekki of miklar áhyggjur heldur bara njóta lífsins. Samt endilega reyna að setja inn einhverjar skemmtilegar myndir :)
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