年賀状びっくりなんだ

I've been having a pretty grim time of it here applying for jobs. Unfortunately, my Japanese isn't good enough to apply for anything that requires Japanese, so it's of limited help so far. I am, to put it mildly, rather grumpy.

Then I got some delayed post:

とっても感動したんだ。 It really touched me. I won't show the back, because I don't want to reveal anyone's names and editing out the personal bits wouldn't leave much, but that was even more touching. All the staff from the cafe wrote with their best wishes. I miss them very much!

Just in case either of them are reading this blog, I should mention that I had New Year cards from two other Japanese friends as well. I was happy to get both of them too! I think the reason this particular one touched me so much was that it was unexpected. You sort of expect that family and close friends will do nice things for you, and so it's not a surprise when they do, even though you appreciate it. When someone you don't know particularly well does something very kind, it's unexpectedly moving.

Lots of warm fuzzies over here!

Adapting to classroom learning

Before coming to GenkiJACS, I studied first through audio courses, then in one-to-one lessons with a tutor, mostly once a week. At the school, there are typically four hours of lessons a day (on the standard course) in groups of 5-6. This is a bit of a difference, and takes some getting used to.

The most obvious thing is, you're not the centre of attention. This may be a plus or a minus for you; when I started with my tutor, I was initially stressed by having all the expectation on me, but got used to it. In a classroom, you get proportionally less feedback and monitoring because you only answer about 1/classmates of the questions. It's a little easier for you to fade away and (deliberately or subconsciously) avoid things you find hard, because someone else may pipe up, or the teacher may turn to someone else. This reduces stress, but of course it also means you're not necessarily going to overcome those fears.