Today has been my first day of feeling like myself since my brother's passing.
It has also been the first day of the year to hit 50 degrees F which may have a bit to do with it though it has been very windy.
Last night I went to sleep with a DVD with 45 hours of mp3 Japanese lessons on starting at the beginning. I think I feel asleep just into the second of the half hour lessons. I slept about 10 hours and when I woke it was at a level I had trouble following. So my plan ( if you read my resolutions you will know I am planning catching my Japanese back up to where it was and then advancing it ) is to again start at lesson one and increase by one lesson every second night. I also plan on doing a lesson of a level of Rosetta stone each day as well. I did all parts of the first lesson today and it was not easy. I scored a 97 but it was not a give away by any means. I may move on then review I haven't decided the best way to use it yet. The audio lessons are not terribly hard. Japanese has fewer sounds than English so with only two that are not in English it is not a hard language to learn to speak or understand. Writing it is another story, I am probably at a 6th grade speech level but only a 2nd or 3rd grade reading level. A nice side effect is the Chinese Kanji I can figure out the meanings of. No idea how to pronounce them but reading them is a bit like figuring the markings on pyramid walls. you know what the symbol means sort of and from the string of symbols you can get the meaning. One of the first I got to recognize was if a Chinese restaurant was licensed to serve booze. Not that I'm a drinker but the symbol sticks. I can also tell men's and ladies restrooms in oriental languages.
Also my bad cold is gone and I am back to working out. I may even go with twice the workouts I had planned. Two cardio workouts a day plus rotating body parts with weights. My one spare bedroom is a computer room, the other a gym and the treadmill in the living room is where I can run and watch TV at the same time.
From my time in the Forces I know the human body ( and even mine I rarely claim to be human. ) can handle and it is far more than most people would believe. Noticeable results should be at roughly the six week mark.
Wish me luck, guts, and determination.
You sound so much better! Our niece speaks fluent Japanese, German, Italian (well she is!) English & French. She's so clever! xxxxxxxxx
ReplyDeleteI woke up feeling almost as good today. After coffee and the new blog article I do intend to find a 2 hour DVD put it on and get on the treadmill at 2.5 mph or 3 kph Canada has gone mostly metric ( exception partial is acres ). However since my field was in engineering we had to know all the systems and I was one of the few. ( I only knew 3 others including my late brother ) who could do all the conversions in our heads faster than others could a calculator.
ReplyDeleteIt is below freezing by about 7 degrees F today where yesterday it was above 50 with a wind that had flags straight out. Used to be able to tell wind speed by such things ( for sniping ) but will need to look that up now.
BTW thanks for your humour on your site. Some days it was the only smile heck often laugh that I got. I printed out the mouse, the monkey and the man with a burden got lots of laughs.