HTLAL Challenges

On the http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/ forum, someone had the great idea to pose a one week wanderlust voucher to everyone on the forum.

I decided to try Latin for a week. I used Peter Jones's "Learn Latin" and started May 7th. Unfortunately, I still have to do one day, so it's been longer than what I anticipated and I've decided I like Latin enough and I'll finish the course. I'm on chapter 11 of 20.

I'm also doing the Super challenge for Spanish, which is reading 100 books and watching 100 movies by January 1, 2014 (+6 hours EST, or 6 p.m. my time December 31, 2013).

I've gotten off to a slow start, and just finished watching "Titanic" with Spanish subtitles last night, so that counts as 2 movies. The rules state every movie of 3 hours or longer counts as 2 movies, any book longer than 500 pages counts as 2 books, children's books count for 1/5 a book, bilingual books count as being fully in the target language and the minimum length for a book is 100 pages.

Another Semester in the Books

I got my grades today. I earned 3 A's and 2 B's.

The 2 B's I figured I would get, because I struggled with one of the classes and the other one was an online course that I didn't really take seriously.

I'm on break until June 5th, and I'll work at my internship and study languages, read books and listen to music during my days.

Breaks are always nice.

Starting Mandarin

I've decided I'll try Mandarin for 6 weeks.

Obviously I won't get very far, but it will at least let me see if I like the language and want to continue. It's also a lot easier to commit to 6 weeks instead of who knows how long it will take to gain any sort of conversational ability in the language.

I'm using Michel Thomas, the Foundation and Advanced courses, and Assimil.

I'll officially start my 6 weeks this Monday, but I'll dabble in it this weekend.

Now I just need to find out how to read Mandarin.

My Latest Guilty Pleasure

http://www.rationalwiki.org

I loved this website, even though I'm a Christian and not a secularist.

I was originally drawn to it by the "List of Internet Kooks" I found.

I soon found out other stuff I liked, particularly the articles against fundamentalist Christian politics and theology.

It's great fun.

This Was a Great Winter

This must have been one of the mildest winters of my life. There were only a few days of nasty weather, at least when I was driving. I hate to drive when the roads are snow covered, but I only had to do that a few times this winter, and I only skidded once or twice, compared to once or twice during a trip out on a snowy day. Also, my college never called a snow day, and my college calls snow days whenever the roads have any snow cover on them at all.

Today it's in the 70s and sunny. I got to enjoy an hour walk this afternoon.

What am I doing inside blogging? I should be outside enjoying this beautiful weather!

Like they say in Ohio: if you don't like the weather, wait a day; it'll change. Who knows, tomorrow it might snow.

Didn't Get the Job, Schedule for Summer and Fall

I didn't get the telemarketing job (renewal, actually) because it didn't fit my schedule. Maybe in May I can do it. They wanted me to work 35 hours the first 2 weeks and then 20 hours (with 5 on a Saturday or Sunday) the rest of the time, with me scheduling the 20 hours myself. That doesn't seem too bad

The school published the list for summer and fall and now I have a general idea of what I'll be taking in (I hope) my last two semesters of college. I'm taking 3 classes this summer and 6 classes in the fall, but 2 out of 6 classes are online and one is an internship.

Plus I have 2 volunteer assignments that I hope I can hold onto.

I hope I'll be busy enough.

Getting Back into Blogging

I'm going to try blogging again.

My life really isn't that interesting, but I want to be a writer, and blogging could help me improve my writing.

I'm on Spring Break right now, and the semester's half complete, so I have plenty of time to write, study languages, listen to music, visit the www.how-to-learn-any-language.com forums, and do other stuff I like.

Oh, and I started going to the gym recently to lose weight. It's going well so far. I'm also using www.myfitnesspal.com, which is helping me manage my calorie intake and usage.

I dropped Medical Assisting in favor of Technical Communications, and I might graduate by the end of the year. I'm not suited to working in healthcare, at least not working directly with patients.

I have an interview for a customer service position with a publisher on Monday. I hope I get the job, because it would be a good way to earn money and kill some time.

I'm volunteering at Project Learn in the advanced ESL class on Thursday nights and at Mercy Medical Center in Canton on Friday mornings. I enjoy volunteering and hope I can do it for as long as possible.

Right now I'm studying Esperanto and Spanish. I'm using the correspondance courses on www.lernu.net to study Esperanto and because I want to learn how to read Spanish I'm using Karl Sandberg's "Spanish for Reading."

That's about all I have going on. Like I said, I'm not very interesting.