Alaska_girl

I went thru my bookshelves today….I don’t actually have that many books but I do have some that have been sitting around forever (like the epic 787 page Napoleon Bonaparte, bought when I was 15!) It would be a relief to have fewer books by the time we move next month (although it’s unlikely Denya will agree to part with many of his massive CS books…)

Anyways, I was able to move 2 books into the ‘go’ pile: a cookbook (I copied the most interesting recipes by hand) and an Alaska almanac. I also got rid of a walking-for-your-health mini book. And I found a book for children that I took from my bro- “Helicopters + 12 collector stickers inside!”....Time for this to go to a deserving kid (hopefully a little girl!) I did, however, read thru it finally and wrote about it in my Scanner Daybook. I even found some sweet photos online of different helicopters and saved them to use as a desktop.

Napoleon: page 318

So, even though I haven’t been updating this site on a very regular basis, I have been working towards this goal. I’m almost done reading ‘La Casa’ and as usual, it’s been an enjoyable (but time-consuming) experience. I haven’t been making a list of the words I don’t know, I’ve simply been reading and using contextual clues to make my best guess. The one word that sticks out in my head is ‘el crack’....which translates to “(financial) crash” (they keep mentioning ‘el crack de 1929’.)

I’ve corresponded with Marina…that meaning I lazily write her in English, but in my defense- when she sends back her massive emails in Russian, I do actually pour over it with my dictionary and then read it out loud.

And I have been studying Japanese pretty regularly. Not that I know much- just a drop in an infinite sea- but that’s one drop more than I know at the beginning on March. It’s actually pretty cool what I know now. Mayumi just taught me the kanji for the word Nihongo and now I can recognize that when I see it. But, to prove how far I have to go, D and I went to dinner at Asiana last night and we eavesdropped on the conversation going on over in the corner….how ignorant of us, but we seriously couldn’t even tell which language they were speaking. It sounded like Chinese, but I didn’t really hear any tones, so we thought maybe it was Japanese??

The biggest thing I’ve done recently- and I’m very proud!- is finally work up the courage to apply for this Bilingual Tutor job with the school district. I have my complete 6-page application and functional resume sitting here on my desk, ready to mail tomorrow. I am also mailing a letter of interest to the Language Interpreter Center because I’d like to get involved with their training. Wow, I’m so proud of myself for getting the ball rolling!

I’ll have to wait until the end of the month to do this, but I will use receipts and bank statements to see exactly what we’ve been spending our money on.

I estimate this will take 1-2 hours.