Beyond My Wildest Dreams

Recently I've been listening to English music. Part of me feels guilty, like I'm breaking the promise I made to learn Japanese. Like I'm ruining my reason for being here.

Part of me doesn't care anymore, and knows that music is one little piece of happiness that I'm not willing to part with. There will never be a part of my life where English isn't present. So in some sense, it's only natural I suppose. Today I listened to "The Little Mermaid" musical soundtrack, several times. There's one set of lyrics in there that caught my attention.

"I'd hoped and wished
And wanted so to be here
Wished and prayed
And planned it to a "t"
Prayed and wow!
Just look - it's really me here!
Walking around, strange as it seems
Somewhere beyond my wildest dreams!"

Last spring, I had hoped and wished, and wanted to be here this summer more than anything. Wanted it so bad that I wanted to go by myself, with no one else from my school, so that it would be my experience and mine alone, as selfish at that is. So now that I'm not enjoying myself at the moment I wonder if my emotions were misplaced. This is beyond my wildest dreams, though not in a good way. When it comes down to it, I know that my thoughts towards Japanese haven't changed, I still love my language studies as I had when I started. Though, in a way the honeymoon is over. Now it's just a lot of hard work, memorizing, and trying desperately not to make mistakes. Next year I want to start another language, specifically Korean or Chinese. Don't ask me why Korean, it just seems like fun. Though, I don't know if I can. Don't know if it's good for me.

At the moment I have three conversation partners set up for me for Japanese, and I'm considering adding a fourth. Maybe that's unsafe, but I know that my constant language practice last year is to thank for any skill that I've acquired now, and now that that chance is gone I have to find a way to replace it somehow. All of them are guys, I wish that there would be a girl in there so I could learn proper intonation for female Japanese, but I guess you take what you can get.

Today I have vocabulary, reading, Kanji, two short essays, and a short story to translate, which is optional, and I haven't started on any of it yet. After lunch I went to the post office, took a nap, and practiced Kanji, I feel like I've been working, but after all I guess I haven't.