life sucks

I am having an awful day. This morning I went searching through my ever growing pile of books to read and discovered that a trilogy my scifi/fantasy loving friend at the hospital lent me, has disappeared. They'd been right out in the open so I'd remember to read them first, but had disappeared from sight while my Dad went about spray painting things and leaving them to dry in the front room (which is where I leave anything I get from the hospital as a form of quarantine). I thought he had just moved them, but when I asked him I discovered to my horror that he'd thrown out a bunch of books the other day without asking me, despite the fact that the front room is also where I fumigate any old books I buy against bed bugs. There were books out there to be thrown away, but they were all in a box on top of the tool cabinet. I know it's not the end of the world if he did throw them away (he says he probably did, but is looking for them now), but it'll cost me money and time to get them back, not to mention make me look like a bit of an idiot in front of my friend. I'm also confused as to how he could ever have confused a book with aliens on it for one of the historical christian novels which I'd put in the throw away box.

On that upsetting note, I went to Korean class. We'd been told that half the class failed the ch 2 vocab quiz (I got three wrong myself, which on a 10 point quiz is awful... and the reason why is because she was crazy and taught a grammar point the quiz was on, right before she gave the quiz which meant that we had to use a new grammar point *and* remember the 47 words that were on the quiz and you lost all points for just mispelling a word, even if you got the grammar correct). Anyway, since she was so appalled, she offered us a second vocab quiz which I expected would be easier so we didn't all fail again (and her vocab quizzes are usually multiple choice and fill in the blanks). Lo and behold, it was one of the hardest quizzes she'd given so far (and I got a fucking 92 on the first lesson test so it's not like I'm not learning the language here). We had to listen to her say the dictionary forms of some of the hardest and easiest verbs and adjectives in the vocab list, then write them, their meaning in English and conjugate them in Korean. I can conjugate fine and I know their meanings, but I can't spell by sound cause everything sounds different when it's pronounced. I've been trying desperately to memorize the spelling of all these adjectives this whole week because I figured they'd be on the lesson test next week, but I expected to have five days of studying them over and over, not be asked to recall them today. I've been studying for hours each day, so it's awful to get a worse (or at least, similar) grade on a second quiz when I've been reviewing those words over and over for the past three days. I told her I was having trouble understanding what she was saying and then spelling it and she just said, "you'll get it eventually", which, well, duh, but what about my grades until then? I'm beginning to hate her.

This is on top of the fact that I work full time this weekend, have tons of homework due Monday, have to forgo going to the bujinkan camp this weekend because I can't afford it due to my health insurance hike up, haven't had the time to do the phd place research I need to work on, and a million other little things that are going wrong and I don't have the time to fix.

I really want to just go home now, but I have Japanese later, and there better not be anything else happening today because I can't take any more. I wish I were at home where I could hug my Appa plushie and cry.

more Korean, bujinkan, civ 5

I ranted to a Korean friend of mine about how evil Hangul pronunciation is and while he pretty much nodded and commiserated that yes, there is a different sound to these adjectives/verbs in dictionary form that I'm not hearing (they all sound like 't' to me), and that even he, who spent half his childhood in Korea, had a problem with it when he first started studying Korean here in the US, it was what I needed to hear rather than my professors, "you'll get it eventually" comment. My friend advised just memorizing it, but I've discovered I have an awful time memorizing things that have no sound, so I've decided to memorize the conjugated forms of the verbs since if I can spell those, then, I'll be able to spell the dictionary form automatically. This is really making me miss the early days of learning Japanese.

On to the good stuff, I finally made it to training again on Weds. I feel like I've been going through withdrawal since I've made it there so few times this month. Unfortunately, I won't make it again on Monday which means if I make it on Weds, I'll only have trained 3 days this month *sob* It wasn't the most interesting of classes with Jack having us do a circular block, then switching our feet to punch. He did make us do a crazy ninja jump to punch the person directly on the T (suffice it to say, a person's body forms a T as it moves and the best place to hit is where the T crosses) and told me a joke about sharks. Our moves after that were variations on the block, jump punch though they weren't that much of a variation. As a result, I was bored for a lot of the class, but couldn't chat much with my partner cause she was lower level and couldn't chat and fight like I do with the better black belts. Jack must have been bored too cause we got a lot of attention. I think I started freaking out my partner after awhile which is weird cause she's one of the most hardcore people I know (her fighting's not up to par yet, but I think she'd take out Bear Grylls in a survivor off). She kept flinching when I threw cross punches which was odd so I had to slow them down. And then, well, when something's fun and works in a fight, I tend to smile while doing it. We were doing a simple thing where the attacker grabs your wrists and hangs on tight, you go down and back while keeping your kamae, then simply roll your wrists and you can easily pull one or both hands out of their grip. I did this and muttered, "This is nice." while doing so and she goes, "That grin of yours is very creepy."... I hadn't even noticed I was smiling, but I figure it's to be expected considering how long I've been trained by Jack (who smiles when something goes well and when it going to hurt the uke).

In other news, I found an hour the other day to play the demo for Civ 5 and I can't decide if I like it or not. Some things are better, some are more annoying, some are less, some I don't know yet, and some I miss already. Both my bro and I can't decide if we'll upgrade or not. (Yes, I realize this is the vaguest review ever, but I have homework to get back to).

Oh, and apologies in that I haven't been reading anyone's journal this... month basically, and probably for the next few months while I try to get the million things done that I need to get done. Hopefully, once phd apps are in, I'll be able to get a bit of a life again. If you want me to see something, leave me a link. Ja ne.