嬉しい! And First Week (Spring Term)

今日、日本のママからメールが来た!　最後のメールは、２００８年だった！「ジュリーは元気ですか？日本のママですよ。地震があって大変で」は言いました。

I got an e-mail from my Japanese mama today!  I haven't talked to her in years!  I sent her an e-mail after the earthquake a few weeks ago, asking if she was OK.  She actually replied!  It wasn't a very wordy email, but hers never are, LOL.  She said, "Julie how are you?  It's your Japanese mama.  There was a terrible earthquake."

I'm really happy to hear from her, though.  I sent her a letter about a year ago, and never got a response, so I figured either it never got there or she was mad at me.  Come to think of it, she might be.  But, either way, she's OK enough to send me an email!

Makes me realize how far downhill my Japanese has gone.  I used to be really, really good at it.  Now, I almost never practice, and so I'm not great at it =_=

In other news, it's now Spring Term, halfway through the week.  I'll update about that later; I'm quite tired right now.

Rainy Day Today

So, Friday I completed my first week of classes. It wasn't too bad. I think that Mondays are going to be the worst, because they're just so long. And I'm already hating that film class. I should think positive, riiiiiiight? heh. Anyway, calculus is going to be difficult, but I can do it! The teacher is really nice, after all.

And, my senior project is awesome! Thursday was my first field day, working with Wolftree, Inc. http://www.beoutside.org/ and although the school had canceled their field trip, I got to have a training day. I'm the only one on Thursdays, therefore it was just me and 2 of the Wolftree staff. It was held at Smith and Bybee Lakes, a kind of wetland up North of where I live -it was an hour's bus ride away but that's okay.

We did cool stuff like learn GPS, identify plants, observe the landscape, do transect studies, and core trees to count their rings and see their age. We also rode a canoe around the shallow lake for about three hours. We saw lots of animals, including three river otters who were adorable and just as curious about us as we were about them. We also saw several great blue herons, who have a surprisingly ugly cry. There were tons of fry in the water, but also some large fish we kept almost running over. There were many ducks, geese, egrets, and a green heron as well. Lots of spiders, for sure. And we heard tree frogs chirping to one another.

For me, this was right up my alley. I was pretty worn out by the end of the day, but it was so worth it. I really had a lot of fun, and I'm so looking forward to post-graduation LIFE. You know, where I don't have things like homework due for a grade. Where I don't have to write asinine papers about dumb movies nobody cares about.

Sorry, I was ranting.

Anyway, off to do bigger and better things. Like eat. Breakfast. It's 11.