Hello and peace to everyone,

Thanks to everyone who has responded to my letters, I really enjoy receiving something other than QPs (Trinity thing).  It has been a couple of weeks since my last email, and so I`m going to write a brief summary of the events taken place and also try to write a little bit to everyone individually. 

Things at school continue to remain pretty steady, the weekdays are filled with commute, class, work, food, sleep and just realizing how quickly this makes time pass is somewhat of a shock to me.  I`ve been outside the US now for almost six weeks, my longest international journey yet.  The time has flown by, and I think it will continue to do so.  For that reason I am very glad that I decided to stay in Japan for a year.  My language ability is improving in leaps and also in very small steps.  It is absolutely true that being immersed in a culture is the best way to learn a language.  Grammar patterns I confused before have now become clear (and actually useful, imagine that!) and even learning new Kanji (the complex and vast set of characters adapted from Chinese) has become easier.  My favorite class has become “Intercultural communication” as we now have the regular Nanzan Japanese students (who although most are English majors rarely speak english).  Our first project is to design and execute the challenge of the “Kompa” also known as “drinking party”.  We will be executing this academically rigorous (well, we DO have to write a journal entry about it) event this Thursday evening, beginning with the first two-hour round at around 6:30 pm.  Gambate!

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