yoyo

So... apparently now I'm back to traveling alone when I go to Paris and Berlin - and Berlin is back in the plans. Interesting last few days - I have to say. All drama aside I think everyone is happy with the final results - okay... maybe not the friend who seemed to want to travel with me. I think she wanted in on my Berlin idea (and maybe my take on Paris) but her work wouldn't allow her to push her time off to a week later.

I was kind of settling into the idea of traveling with someone else. Now I'm feeling kind of nervous about this - Berlin?! by myself?! I don't speak German! What am I thinking?! [I'm sure this feeling will pass pretty quickly.]

Tonight's class was good. I'm feeling pretty good about the study regime I've come up with - it seems to be working pretty well. Last week I spent about 2 hours writing, 2 hours practicing speaking and maybe a bit over an hour doing review on top of the writing and speaking. I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier but I started keeping all of my new words in Anki and using it for review / study. I know... I know... why didn't I think of this earlier? I was using decks that other people had made and was finding it hard because I wasn't really hearing / seeing these words in other places than in the Anki review. But making my own deck(s) really makes sense. It'll take me some time to put all the words I know into a deck but once it's done it should be pretty easy / quick to maintain.

I've also realized what it is that I don't like about the book I'm using. The exercises mainly just consist of replacing words (given to you in Japanese) in a sentence they give you. It's very formulaic and doesn't require much thinking - just reading and replacing words. It seems like I would learn more if it gave me the words in English and I would have to think of 1) how to say it in Japanese and then 2) the proper particles. Meh. Whatever, I'm just going to keep on doing my exercises, memorization and whatever else I can cram in and hope that it all come together and makes sense at some point.