Hey hey hey so yes indeedy long time no mumble. Been veeeery busy building a mini-website, soon to be launched on the TGW Network. Also been busy not going to exams (I’m so naughty! Well, they are optional after all, what would YOU do?), feeling overwhelmed by all these ideas I have and just not enough time to put them into practice. I need a clone.

So, my first semester is over. The final exams (those that were compulsory) were a mixture of very difficult and very easy. Overall, I’m happy with how I did. Well done me. I am now faced with an 11 week holiday, which may sound like a long time, but it isn’t, especially when you have a list of to do items that looks a bit like this:

• Learn readings of 2,042 kanji using Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji II, when it finally turns up. I ordered it in November!
• Record numerous episodes of A Year in Japan
• Make website for Translation company
• Read the ten books I really want to read
• Revise all my grammar in preparation for progression to Japanese Level 5
• Train for the very exciting event in May (web site already complete, to be launched soon)
• Finish (or should that be ‘start and finish’?) my Year Abroad Project for Sheffield Uni
• Go to Osaka and see my friends
• Go snowboarding with uni friends (already booked. I can ski, but can’t snowboard at all. Thus I will learn next month!)
• Start to plan my epic voyage home in late August, which will see me travel over land and sea all the way from Tokyo to the West of England. I am VERY excited about that.
• Possibly launch a little shop on the TGW network

So, as you can see, I have my work cut out!

I am so excited by all the possibilities in life. I’m finally starting to realise that there’s just no point in waiting for things to happen, I’ve got to MAKE it happen!

The start of my holiday is not the only thing to have had a big impact upon our daily routine: *Twinkle* has started work. As she thought, the hours are incredibly long. I’m not exaggerating when I say that yesterday was typical; she left the house at 7.20am, and got back at 11pm. Still, working hours aside, in terms of how it treats its staff, it is a great company, Completely different from my image of a typical Japanese company. I’m really proud of her. her job is not at all easy, and I personally would be shitting myself if it was me.

In three years from now she’ll have completed her contract and be able to retire.

Hurray for life!