メキシコ！(Continued~)

So, I promised you to continue talking about my trip to Mexico, didn't I? Haha... ^^" ごめんね！最近（さいきん）忙しいでした。

So, the next day, after going around some more churches in Puebla, we took the afternoon bus to Oaxaca. After spending the night in the youth hostel, we went on a half-day tour to Monte Albán, an archeological site of a pre-Columbian ceremonial center situated on top of a leveled mountain ridge. It was really impressive. 写真を見てください！

The next day, we went to Palenque to see the ruins there. It was quite far so we took the night train there and back. It was tiring (疲れました！) but it was worth it to see the ruins in the jungle. It was a very different environment – much more humid, and hotter.

This is misleading... This building was huge!

It was really tiring going up all these (absurdly high) steps, but the view was worth it!

And here's me, finally getting some rest. ^^

The next day, we spent some more time in Oaxaca – mostly visiting museums and churches. We were really lucky and were in Mexico for the Day of the Dead (the equivalent of Halloween, you could say), so we got to see some special decorations, and we saw the processions dancing through the streets. Some of the costumes were amazing! The most popular was, of course, the skeleton in a wedding dress. It was quite entertaining to see them dancing to the upbeat music.

On our last day in Oaxaca, we took another half-day tour just to see some landscapes in the area. We stopped by a local cooperative of women doing traditional weaving, a local production of Mexcal (メキシコのさけ), and the widest tree in the world...

The most important and special part of the local traditional weaving is that
the threads are all coloured with natural colorants. They use flowers, spices, and even dried insects.

Second Cycle Goal Statement

Goal:
Besides avoiding the ingrained habit of changing the intonation in questions, which I think I can do as long as I consciously think about it for a while, I can't think of specific things that I want to improve about my Japanese pronunciation. That is not to say that my pronunciation is perfect, far from it, but I can't pinpoint any specific problem that I could work on. However, there is something that I can work on improving for my speaking. My Korean teacher has pointed out to me that my problem is often that I speak too slowly because I am always trying to make perfect sentences. As he says, when speaking, I don't always need to use complete, grammatically perfect and complex sentences. It is more important to get used to speaking at a "normal" speed (a speed close to what would be normal for a native speaker) and to be able to sound natural – even when hesitating or not knowing what to say. Although this is harder in Japanese because I don't have as much vocab yet, my goal will be to increase the speed at which I speak, not just the words but sentences in general. This should help with the problem I have of completely forgetting intonations when I am hesitating.


Activities:
I will keep going to language table at least once a week and watching anime, and doing some shadowing of the anime. I will also try to do some "official" shadowing so I can get more feedback on my pronunciation – let's set a goal of one shadowing exercise per week. I will try to speak more at the language tables, and to use more Japanese when talking to my Japanese friends.

メキシコ！First Day!

秋休みに私は友達とメキシコに行きました。メキシコの天気はとてもよかったです。It was very sunny all the time, but it wasn't too hot because we were on high plateaus. あたしたちはメキシコシティ(Mexico City)とプエブラ(Puebla)とオアハカ(Oaxaca)とパレンケ(Palenque)に行きました。

We took the plane to Mexico City on Friday and got onto a bus to Puebla as soon as we got there. We arrived in Puebla around 午前二時 and just slept. The next day, we visited the city. とても可愛い町です！There are lots of hispanic-style buildings, of all colours, with cute windows, and churches everywhere (that seemed to be quite common in Mexico). The main square, the Zocalo, is really impressive. We went sweets-shopping in a street that had traditional sweets shops, and tried some really good things – the milk-flavored sweets were especially good in my opinion, but they also had a lot of coconut-flavored things.

This is Puebla's Zocalo. There is a fountain in the middle, and a basilique on one side,
the town's municipal palace on the other, and churches at every corner. 大きいですね！

忙しいですから今日はここまで話せます。There's too much to say and too many pictures to show, so I'll just leave it here for now. じゃ、明日！


秋休み＝あきやすみ (fall break)
友達＝ともだち (friend)
午前＝ごぜん
二時＝にじ
可愛い＝かわいい (cute)
町＝まち
忙しい＝いそがしい (busy)
話せます＝はなせます (to talk)

たいへん！忘れた！（PE Reflection Statement)

I was supposed to write my PE reflection statement by midnight last Friday, but I forgot to do it! I planned to write it between my oral exam in the morning and leaving for fall break at noon, but I underestimated the time I'd need to pack, and I couldn't write it before leaving. I went on a backpacking trip to Mexico so I didn't bring my computer, and I didn't have access to Internet... Well, I did once in a hostel, but I had completely forgotten about it. ほんとにすみません！

Anyway, more on my trip to Mexico later, let me write this reflection statement now.

Bilan du Premier Cycle
During this cycle, I did go to the Japanese Language table at least once a week, and I watched anime most weeks (not two episodes every week, but something equivalent to that in average, since I sometimes went to anime club and watched three or four episodes in a row). All in all, I did a lot of listening, and I think my listening improved.
Speaking-wise, I got a little practice, but not as much (sometimes I could only go to the Monday table in Forbes, and my level was not high enough to actively participate in the conversation). I didn't do as much shadowing as I planned to, but when watching anime with my roommate, I would sometimes repeat random (short) sentences, and ask her to tell me if they sounded wrong. I think I tried to avoid shadowing properly because it is very time-consuming – I'd have to listen to something several times, and record myself to make sure I'm saying it right... – and I hate listening to my own voice! (>_<) However, I think my speed increased for simple sentences, and I am less likely to use wrong intonation for words and phrases that I am familiar with.

Oral Exam
Unfortunately, I don't remember my exam that clearly, but I'll comment on what I remember. I think リウ-さん and I practiced enough to be comfortable with each other. We didn't write a script for the oral, which meant that during the second section, we would sometimes have small pauses in the conversation while we were looking for something to ask about, but it also meant that we practiced not only pronunciation, but also grammar and vocabulary every time we practiced together, so that was good. Thanks to that, the spontaneous conversation with Suzuki-san went quite well (except that sometimes we couldn't figure out who should answer Suzuki-san's questions...)
The main problem I had was hesitating during the third section, especially while trying to conjugate adjectives, and sometimes when trying to find the vocabulary. I think that might have affected my intonation. (To be honest, I did not pay too much attention to intonation during the exam, because I was so focused on forming proper sentences and saying the right words.)


Signing off now, because I have a lot of other work to catch up on... Sorry for the wall of text, and I hope you all had a great fall break (or a great week, either way)! Look forward to more posts with pictures of Mexico!