Level 3 Japanese is a scary place. I want to go back to that nice happy place that was the Genki series of textbooks. Now I’m up to ‘Intermediate Japanese’, and I feel like I’ve skipped a semester somewhere. It didn’t help that Kitasaka-sensei came in to do her hour of kanji, and started telling us to write kanji that none of us knew….we all sorta looked at each other and scratched our heads, figuring we were just dumb, but then someone reminded her that she was on the wrong section…..oh oops. Melville-sensei talks very fast, and I feel like I can only understand about 70% of what she’s saying at a time, but it seems like everyone else in the class is getting it and I’m not. There are a bunch of people in my class that have taken 3rd year before so it feels kind of unfair to me that I’m compared to them. But, I’m trying not to get too discouraged since its only the very first day of class. Cassidy has given me some pointers so I hope they help me when test time comes. I need to change some of my study habits from last semester but at this point I’m not sure what to do to study more effectively.

After class was over today we had a fire drill. Now, note, last semester, we had NO fire drill. Way to promote prevention, JCMU! This time, they made us all stand out in the cold and the snow and use the fire extinguishers (filled with water) to knock over a ‘fire’ made from the wooden cut out. Yes, it was LAME. JCMU’s answer to fire prevention is “If there is a fire, run out the door and stand behind the building! But if you can stick around and put out the fire yourself, then that’s good too. And oh by the way, the fire alarm system isn’t actually connected to the fire department….you have to call them yourself, where they may or may not ask you a lot of strange questions in Japanese that you won’t be able to understand.” After having to demonstrate our ability to rub together two brain cells and use the extinguisher, they brought us back inside so that we could ‘listen’ to the fire alarm going off. Since loud beeping noises from the hallways might possibly be confused for something other than a fire alarm, apparently. We stood waiting around for about 15 minutes while the admins rambled on, and they demonstrated what the alarm would sound like if there is a gas leak in your room. The fire alarm will then talk to you and say something like “Gasu hnsiiuhnedid desu” (no, that isn’t really Japanese). It was at this point that I realized that the reason my MRE’s make the fire alarm go off is apparently it thinks there is a gas leak going on. Well, a note for anyone at JCMU that is reading this: If your fire alarm starts talking to you saying there is a gas leak and there really ISN’T one, you better unscrew that thing from the ceiling pronto, otherwise if it sets off the alarm in the hallway, your gas will be automatically shut off and you will then have no hot water until you can get a tech person to come and turn it back on again! (If this happens on a Friday, you are SOL for 3 days.) I speak from first hand experience here (sorry Cassidy…I really didn’t mean it ). Don’t say I didn’t warn you….

In other fire hazard news, here are pictures of my heater! Yes, it looks pretty scary and I’m sure if I draped clothing or papers over it they would probably catch on fire. But, its very warm and I like it a lot. You can have 1-3 of the heating elements on at a time, and you can also make it swivel! Its very nice and I no longer freeze to death in my room. And don’t worry, I don’t leave it on at night (mostly because its so FREAKIN BRIGHT) or when I’m out of the room.