Looking back on the things I've done...

I'm back in the U.S. for real now, and even back on East coast time in a record single day after an entirely sleepless Narita-Newark flight left my body's internal clock reeling in confusion. I'm glad to be back with my family in our annual reunion at my grandparent's house and eagerly anticipating the new school year, but also missing my host family dearly.

When I checked my e-mail for the first time after I my return I found the sweetest message from my okaasan waiting for me. As I read it, I felt overcome by a wave of natsukashiisa... I miss most the little routines like walking to the train station every morning with my okaasan. It was a good fifteen minutes away and she wasn't taking the train with me, but she'd accompany me to the station every morning, rain or shine (and there was more rain than shine). Along the way we'd chat about anything and everything or sometimes just lapse into companionable silence... All I can say is it was the best way to start a day.

I'm incredibly grateful to my host family for taking me into their house, for truly being my family for two months, and it's terrible to say goodbye not knowing if I'll ever see them again. Right now I'm struggling to write the perfect letter to them, feeling oh-so-clumsy as I fumble for the right words to express my heartfelt thanks.

While my summer experience still leaves me struggling in Japanese letter composition... I know plenty of the correct ritual expressions, but long to write something beyond the trite sounding osewaninarimasu, still, I feel that my language skills have improved a lot.

My speaking and listening comprehension are certainly far beyond what they were before, but I fear losing some of the progress now that I'm outside of the immersion environment. My reading and essay writing skills are also improved, though kanji writing still remains my weakness. I can also now competently discuss a wide variety of social problems (a big focus in our textbook), with newfound vocabulary to describe things like acid rain and the yutori kyouiku education system, though I wish the emphasis had been a little less academic.

I'm now left at a bit of a crossroads, planning to take the Japanese placement test, but unsure whether I'll be taking a Japanese class in the fall... the bitter realist in me realizes that this is perhaps slightly suicidal on top of my chemical engineering requirements and whispers reminders that I still have writing and humanities distribution requirements to fulfill. And even if I do take a class this semester, am I just postponing the inevitable backslide another few months? I intend to keep up the spoken Japanese as much as possible by speaking with my family, but without an academic class, I know I'll start losing the language surprisingly quickly. (I'm always appalled to realize how much of my high school Spanish I've forgotten.) For now all I can do is see how the fall turns out... where I can place and if I have time for another class. For now sayounara and thank you to the Light Fellowship for giving me this amazing opportunity.