As usual, I’ve been super busy.

I took the J-Ken Practical Information test (level 2) and passed. I’m expecting an 80-90% score on it. My friends say that I could have passed level 1 with no problems, but I’m glad I just stuck with level 2. It feels good to do well on one of those bloody tests.

Other than that, it’s been the same old grind: class, homework, AS duties, with occasional breaks where I hang out with friends. I had to give a 5 minute presentation on Wednesday for the AS. I’m actually pretty miserable at getting up in front of people and talking so it was pretty brutal, especially since I had to stand there and listen to criticism afterwards. But, hey, the only way to get better is to do these things so whatever.

I think I failed the big CS test we had on Thursday, partly because I didn’t have any time to study and partly because it was half math problems and I have trouble with those. I don’t feel that I got even 50% of the questions right, so I might have to retake it. These were actually student-made problems, and I think the math problems were harder than the ones on the real test are because those at least tend to be a little better with using intuitive numbers (calculators aren’t allowed). Oh well.

My winter break starts today, but I don’t think it’s going to be very restful. First off, I have a lot of homework. I already finished my CASL homework, but I have 100 CS problems to do, a 1 page report on something relating to the Showa period, two reports on what we would do with a DVD that had 1TB of memory (for a contest, which means we also give up our rights to the ideas we come up with… boo), and create a mini text-based RPG (I’m modeling mine after MUDs). And I need to find the time to do all that in between my my AS duties (I have a work shift Monday morning, a meeting with my group mates about the AS New Years’ party, etc) and other plans.

The next few weeks are going to be fun, but not exactly more restful than my normal schedule…

Less than 2 days until the HAL-MODE FESTIVAL. Everyone has off tomorrow, but being part of the Assistant Staff means that I have to drag my ass out and take a tour of where the HMF is being held so that when the high schooler I’m showing around asks burning questions such as, “Where’s the bathroom?” I won’t give them a blank stare or start crying or something.

I mostly just hope that I’ll get a nice and chatty student, so when I have obvious Japanese Fail it won’t result in an awkward silence that lasts for several hours. No, seriously, when I was in charge of entertaining prospective students during the AO (dunno what it stands for; it’s basically a mock class so prospective students can get a feel for the school) there was like 5 minutes of awkward silence in which all my efforts to start up a conversation died a miserable, embarrassing death. I ended up telling them random facts about the school until more people arrived. My reputation as “the weird foreigner” is justly deserved, believe me.

So, anyway, I’ll have more to report on this time-honored school tradition of mine later (the HMF, not letting weird foreigners be in charge of entertaining prospective students). Just felt like giving a random update, since it’s much easier to do that than to do more work on the FAQs.