I should have written earlier, but two days ago I was notified that I've been accepted into the Critical Language Scholarship Program -- I'll be going to either Kazan, Ufa, or Vladimir this summer! There will be more on that and other things this weekend.

With summer in mind, the temperature outside has reached 43°F (6°C). I'm feeling more alive than I have in months.

And now for a genuine personal post! There's even a new icon post over at momoizumu, too, like old times.

( About Middlebury... )

( ...and about school right now. )

( Also, a music meme! )

Fortunately, I've gotten myself a Pixiv account! Unfortunately, I've also started uploading things to it, which clearly means that I am going to lose sleep for the next few months over whether or not the (mostly) Japanese fandom likes my digital scribbles. I shall consider myself successful when someone on LJ finds my fanart on Danbooru, crops them, and posts them as artsy icons.

More seriously, though, I'm beginning to regret it, as I now feel obligated to post captions in Japanese...when I still can barely write in Japanese. Our classes are centered around Professor Eleanor Jorden's Japanese: The Spoken Language, which -- as the title suggests -- doesn't focus on the written language at all; as such, while conversationally we're ahead of students studying at the same level with different texts, we're very definitely illiterate.³ That said, I feel that the textbook's grammar explanations are remarkably clear and illustrative based on what I've heard about other people's problems with Japanese. At least everybody seems to fully understand the difference between "wa" and "ga!"

¹ No, seriously, Spicy Kimchi Noodles and Spicy Kimchi Noodles alone gave me my first kidney stone. They contain the average human being's daily allowance of sodium, and possibly the average horse's, too. Do not eat these noodles.

² What's ironic about this is that the weather is not a good subject for small talk in Russia. It's too boring and pointless.

³ Thus far we only know a chunk of the katakana syllabary, which Professor Jorden started off with in JWL (Japanese: The Written Language) on the basis that it would provide us with many more words to read and write off the bat. (I myself was pretty dubious about it at first, but if you think about it, what can we do with hiragana at this point? Write out particles and the copula over and over again? We need kanji to make it work!)

Hello, everyone! I have returned from my journey home, as well as from all of the surprises that met me when I came back to university (including daffodils, a hurried overview of the life and death of Ilya Muromets, the connections between Russian and Greek epics, an unexpected article in French, and a JSPS survey).¹

Special welcome to baelheit, ianthefira, and kaiyashe, whom I met in the Baten Kaitos thread in a "Small Fandoms" friending meme. If you added me to your friends list because of that meme, and I failed to add you back, please comment here so that I can go ahead and do so.

( A road to the dignified future. )

¹The research coordinator promised the participants a free Japanese handkerchief, retail value 15 USD, with the return of the surveys. They were even designed by a Living Natural Treasure! Wonderful!

If ever I have come through on anything, it has been providing carefully-arranged screencaps of works in progress.

( «Я вам написала...оперу!» Or, the completely expected yet dramatic entrance. )

Also!

Happy birthday, mairenn_k!

I'm so sorry I missed it! I'm glad your birthday turned out well.

Above all else, since I've been failing to be a good LJ friend lately:

( Birthday greetings moved behind a cut, since HTML can do amazing things sometimes. )

Here's hoping that every birthday you have after this will bring you happiness and good fortune! I will also make you fine gifts if you want me to, even while I'm working on the formerly-Christmas-but-now-Winter requests.

( And now for some other things, including a meme and some notes on what I have to do this semester. )

I WAS ACCEPTED INTO THE 2010 SESSION OF THE DAVIS SCHOOL OF RUSSIAN AT MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE!

Feel free to ignore my whining from the last post.

ETA: Thank you very much for the virtual blue ribbon, Anonymous. Whoever you are, I appreciate it.