Whew, I’m exhausted, but I completed the first complete draft of my thesis. 23 pages, 6200+ words. I’m pleased.
Now I’ve got it sent out to some friends who have offered to proofread, give constructive criticism, etc.
Plus, I was reminded tonight that I’m winning a “race” with a certain someone. ;^P
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month! Don’t forget to check yourself regularly, and have your partner help. Men can get it, too. Think Pink!
Hey! I made it as one of the 1st 500 blogs to go pink and get linked at Pink for October! After that, he got overwhelmed. Someone even made a photo-mosaic from all the blogs.
Today I feel: Relieved, yet very lame. Confused.
Today I did: Called my (very understanding) Prof. after emailing him my pitiful work. He’s being very kind, and will try to petition for an extension. Just in case, he told me to crank out most of it over the weekend. I also took our cat, Lilith, to the vet because she had developed cherry eye a couple weeks ago. This is rare in cats, more common in dogs. Monday our vet referred her to an animal ophthalmologist. The most common treatment for cherry eye is surgery, which is expensive. Fortunately, the doctor was able to tuck the tissue back into the crevice where it belongs. Much cheaper and easier. She will probably be able to get rid of the collar tomorrow.
TV I’m watching: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I’ve got 3 months of them saved up, and need to get down to watching them for themes. Also, Dirty Jobs over dinner. We love that show.
What I’m reading: Bakhtin. Throne room reading was Boneyard Vol. 5 until this morning, now it’s My Sassy Girl.
What I’m looking forward to: Being done! So I can move on with my life.
Current pet peeve: Not being done.
Today I feel: Pretty good.
Today I did: Reading and writing for my Senior Thesis. It’s getting down to the wire, especially since I gave myself a kick in the ass by promising my (very understanding) Prof a draft Monday afternoon. Keith has been a big help getting me to focus my data. He’s the best boyfriend probably ever. Also, I found out yesterday that Friday I became an aunt again. I’ll ‘splain with pics after the cut. Keith also helped me turn my blog pink for Breast Cancer Awareness month, as suggested by /. Even men can get breast cancer, so test yourself regularly!
TV I’m watching: Mostly just in the same room as Keith watches “Cops“. Again. We did watch “Airline” during dinner, tho’.
What I’m reading: Mostly journal articles and Bakhtin. Throne room reading is Penny Arcade: Epic Legends of the Magic Sword Kings!
What I’m looking forward to: Finishing a fine scholarly work (before Friday). Also, Friday the 13th!
Days until thesis is DUE: 5
Baby stuff below:
Just so no one panics, my graduation website has content, but I haven’t mailed out announcements yet.
It’s a little annoying to have paid so much for formal announcements and have them arrive with some assembly required. I don’t just mean stuffing, because that’s a given. I actually have to fold the announcement into quarters myself!
I can hear you crying “wah, wah, poow widdle baybee.” OK, so it’s not hard, but for what I paid, I expected more than scored, laser printed sheets with the school seal on them. Except for the seal, I could have done the rest myself.
Whatever. They’re not ready yet. Be patient.
I received my graduation announcements the other day. There is some assembly required. It reminds me that graduation is just around the corner. Eek!
To celebrate, Keith bought a website in honor of graduation day. We’re such geeks :^) It only has a little content now, and some of that is incorrect. I’ll try to get something more formal done at some point…
I’m 4 weeks behind in writing, and have 2 weeks left in Japan. Want to bet which happens first?
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Anna is very passionate about the Czech revolution from Communism, which happened when she was a child. Her presentation was on the changes to Czech after the revolution. It’s a very deep topic, and her audience was a fairly select few. Including, I believe, the strict dorm head, Sister Yamatani.
Anna has brought up the topic many times in conversation in the past, so even though the presentation was in Japanese, and difficult, I understood most of it. She had lots of slides to go with it, too.
I was late again, so I was far away and in the dark. The pictures suck. These two are passable, barely.
I don’t know why, but usually I’m the only other study abroad student at the other presentations. I guess I feel a stronger need to give moral support. Also, they’re fairly interesting, even when I can’t understand them.
My presentation is only days away. Eeek!
Lenka’s presentation was about various monsters and creatures of myth in Czech culture. Many were very interesting, but her presentation was a bit disorganized because the dorm computer hiccuped and lost her outline. Fortunately she knew most of them from memory because she’s got a book coming out next year on the subject.
Lenka is an up-and-coming fantasy author, so this subject is dear to her. She also is an avid player of Vampire, waking up at 2a.m. Japan time to play with her friends in Europe. She’s not very confident with her English, so she doesn’t have much work published in English yet. Currently she’s working with a Japanese producer on a manga deal (I think). But this is besides the point.
Many of the creatures I had never heard of, and many had hard to pronounce or spell names. I vaguely remember some mention of the White Lady, and apparently Golems originated in Czech. She also talked about Veela, but she hasn’t read Harry Potter yet, only seen the movies, so she didn’t know Veela featured in the fourth book.
It was very interesting, despite the disorganization. Once again, pictures were difficult because of the darkness, but at least this time I wasn’t late, so I got a good seat.
Oh, and food poisoning from lunch, which sucked.
Since before Golden Week, the Miyabi club has been preparing for this luncheon with the alumni group of the University of the Sacred Heart, known as JASH. (I think it stands for Japan Alumni of the Sacred Heart.) The JASH members prepare lunch, and we have a meet and greet. All foreign exchange students were required to go.
Since it falls in the midst of our presentations, I’ve started to think of this time as the dog and pony show. Cynical, I know, but everyone is stressed about their presentations. Also, the Miyabi Club decided to have us perform a song to symbolize our unity.
Apparently, “If You’re Happy and You Know It” is present in many, many countries in their native tongues, with an occasional change of melody. We practiced it in Japanese, English, Korean, Chinese, Czech, and Thai. Czech was hard, but Thai was even harder. I’m sure we butchered it in Thai, not that the JASH members could probably tell.
The song is cute, although aimed at a much younger audience. But with impending presentations, our cuteness tolerance level was lower than usual, so mostly we felt silly. Ang skipped a couple of rehearsals, and Lenka discussed not attending. In the end we were all present. I decided to be a “good dog” and dress up, but most of the other three month students did not.
The JASH ladies prepared pot luck, so some of the dishes were tasty and interesting, and others were not. Most of the dishes were Japanese cuisine, but some were of other cuisines, including Chinese and French.
In addition to coffee and soda, there was also a matcha station. Matcha is the powdered green tea used in tea ceremonies. There was a little of that formality, but not very much. They even let us make our own cups of matcha if we wanted to. And they had the appropriate sweets for the tea ceremony, separate from the dessert station.
So even if I felt dumb, it was a good thing to do. I did reasonable amounts of mingling and had a good time. The ladies sent us home with goodies, but I took very few, since I usually eat at the cafeteria, and others don’t.
Well, when everything happens, it happens at once. I began classes, experienced Tokyo’s largest earthquake in several years–6.1M, and caught acute bronchitis. And it rained. This week has been tough.
I probably shouldn’t have walked to Shibuya last week, but the weather was so beautiful, and it seemed like something interesting to do before classes started. Monday it rained, and Hye Young kept claiming that I had a fever, but I had no way to tell. When I stayed in on Saturday, both Jin Young and Ji Yoon brought me Korean cold medicine and vitamin C. It seemed to help, which is why I went out on Sunday.
Another of the colorful tiles you see occasionally in the sidewalk. Art inside a bathroom in Shibuya. A gothic Lolita hands out flyers for alternative television.
Monday, though, someone mentioned my cold to Ms. Somekawa, our liason in the International Center. She’s been a bit like a mom to us, asking after us, and taking Hye Young, Cat, and I out to Chinese food before the others arrived. Ms. Somekawa insisted I go to the student health center to be checked out after class.
Fortunately I had my electronic dictionary. My Japanese is pretty bad comparatively, and the nurse and I traded medical terms through the dictionary. She looked at my throat, which was inflamed, took my temperature under my armpit (at least not anally, like in Germany!), and asked about symptoms. Then she gave me cold medicine, anti-inflammatory (fever and throat) drugs, throat lozenges, and told me to come back on Wednesday when the doctor would visit if I hadn’t improved.
Shortly after the visit, I started phlegm production, by coughing and nasally. Green, disgusting. Ick. The next day at class, Anna and Lenka wisely wanted nothing to do with me, but Cat and Hye Young didn’t seem to care. It had stopped raining, so I went to find the post office to mail some post cards. During lunch, it started up again. I had left the umbrella at the dorm, so I pulled up my hood and plodded through the rain.
Soaked, I arrived in time for my first Japanese subject class, which I’m calling Children’s Literature. I was a little nervous, because the professor hadn’t returned Ms. Somekawa’s requests for information on the class or granted permission for me to attend. The class was crowded, but there was a seat up front. She seemed genial to the class, and spoke clearly into the microphone, but I understood almost nothing of what she said. While my throat wasn’t actually sore, I used the lozenges as cough drops, so I wouldn’t cough during the lecture. I introduced myself after the class, but she seemed unimpressed to have a semi-literate foreigner in the class. I don’t think I’ll keep this class.
I was on toilet duty Monday and Tuesday, so I had to hurry through the cleaning, so I could go to bed early. Toilet duty and Kitchen duty rotate through the dorm floor. Each period of servitude is for two days. Next week I have Kitchen duty, so I’ll have to figure out what that entails, because there’s additional kanji there I don’t understand.
Wednesday is my long day, and the others were happy to hear I was going to see the doctor at lunch, because my cough had gotten worse. I had the dorm “mom” on duty check my temperature, and at least I had no fever. The doctor listened to my chest and back, checked my throat and glands, and listened to my symptoms. He declared I did not, thank goodness, have pneumonia (!!!), but acute bronchitis. Not good news, but not pneumonia. He prescribed more of the anti-inflammatory drugs, gargling 4 times a day with what I think is iodine – 6 drops in water, drink plenty of water, and get plenty of rest. Sadly, I had three more classes that day.
Before lunch was Japanese Culture. After lunch was Japanese Society, and two sessions of Japanese language. I managed to make it through the classes, although the latter half of the last language class is kind of blurry, but that could be because I am the worst student in the class. All of my teachers that day were new, so I felt compelled to go to them. I have seven sessions of Japanese language per week, five teachers for Japanese, and three textbooks. Whew. I ate dinner, left a note that I was going to bed early, and went to bed.
Thursday, I decided I should stay in bed. There was one new teacher to meet, but I felt it would probably be OK. I left a note for Anna, the classmate who lives closest to me, and left a message for Ms. Somekawa, my International Center liason. She called back and offered to bring me some Vitamin C fruit. I called Keith, and then went to bed and essentially slept all day. I only got up for small meals to take my medicine with. Of course the weather cleared up and it looked nice outside. That evening, I took a bath, a rare treat for me. The baths are only open from 5-9 p.m. I suppose it’s because of the high volume of water used to sustain them. Also, there’s additional water use because in Japan, you wash and rinse your body clean before you get in the bath. I managed to go at a time when no one else was using it. This had happened once before, and I had resolved to bring a camera with me to take pictures if it was empty. (No, this is NOT Japanese Girls Gone Wild). The baths are gorgeous and luxurious, and hot. I soaked until I was jello, and got out.
The room was steamy, so I’ve tried to clean them up a bit.Friday, I resolved to get something done, although still rest a lot. I was feeling a little better. Friday is new sheets day, so I had stripped the bed, and prepared for my morning shower by laying out my clothes on it. I was about to go to the shower, when a house “mother” stopped by with the oranges Ms. Somekawa had sent over for me. She seemed appalled that my bed had no sheets, and asked whether I used them to sleep on. I tried to explain that I was in the process of trading old sheets for new, but it didn’t seem like she believed me. She kept repeating (in Japanese) how sheets protected the mattress they had loaned me from perspiration. *sigh* So now I’m a barbarian who sleeps on a naked mattress. Little does she know that I nicked a second sheet to use as a top sheet. Oh, the irony.
The weather was nice again, which was good for laundry, but is making me a little stir crazy. I’ve resolved to stay in all day Saturday, though, no matter how nice the weather is. I want to get better.