I deserve to post

I just spent about three hours (and that's a conservative estimate, but I'm afraid to count more accurately...) on a report for Japanese class about Katakana words. I don't know *how* I spent so much time on it. Phil finished his *in class* yesterday, and I must have tripled the length of mine since then. When we started the "project," I was very unexcited about it, but during the presentations yesterday and then while writing today, I just kept thinking of more and more to say, and the enthusiasm was only exacerbated by the fact that I was able to actually convey (to some extent) what I wanted to say in Japanese. I feel like I am on a major threshold here, but I wouldn't know/notice it if I hadn't just "wasted" so much time on that one, dinky report. I'm slightly giddy from this small accomplishment, I guess because it's been so long since I've felt any sense of accomplishment in class (especially since Suzuki-sensei constantly reams me for my pronunciation - I feel like I'm the *only* one who gets picked on quite like that, and I get *really* flustered/embarrassed speaking in front of Sensei now as a result). ooh ooh AND I got an email from the ITO Foundation (they've started sending their emails in Japanese), and I was able to understand it all by myself! (Granted, there were a couple kanji I didn't know, but they were non-essential.) So yeah, all these little successes are why I deserve to take a break now and post.

But now I need to get back to work and prepare for Friday's presentation. *eep*