Fencing is fun. And hard. And full of grad students. Which yeah, was pretty weird. I felt short. Really really short and incompetent. Buuuut the coach seems nice - unlike some athletics teachers I've had who look at you like "you're not an Olympic level gymnast - in fact, you just tripped over air. I hate you." He was demanding and had a really thick accent, and I probably won't be best friends with him, but he seemed to be alright. I'm reeeeeeeeeally sore though, so I'm kind of worried about how I'll handle tomorrow. *is scared*
Japanese is made of win. Seriously. The teachers seem so awesome and incredibly enthusiastic and I think I'm going to like it a lot a lot a lot. Some of the pronunciations are a bit tricky - especially the words that have been integrated into the US but are pronounced differently, like sayonara and arigatoo. And I already hate learning hiragana, so kanji are probably going to be even worse, urgh. But I think I'm going to love it overall, I really do.
SLE strikes fear into my heart. We had our first Mark-lecture, and it was...well, indescribable. He is amazing. And passionate, and opinionated, and god, I'm becoming a Marksist, I swear. He was talking about education, and the purposes of a college education, and why the humanities are so important, and the things colleges don't do anymore but they should, and I felt so inspired and pissed off and like I could just sit and listen to him for hours. But I also felt really dumb and uninformed and useless and like I'll never have anything intelligent to say in section discussions and like Vasiliy - who is in my section - is going to rip all my arguments apart and laugh at me all the time. And I fear our essays. I'm thinking that we're going to get them back and it'll be like when I give an essay to my mom and all she tells me is "it sucks, do it over." I mean, I think I'm a pretty good writer - not brilliant, but decent at least - but that doesn't mean my profs are going to agree. I'm kind of freaked out. I'm still undecided at this point on whether SLE was a great opportunity or a huge mistake.