Oh wow

So somehow, nearly a whole month went by since my last post.  I'm really not sure how that happened (in fact, a good chunk of my mental space is currently filled with 'Where the heck did October go???').  But!  That means I have lots of things to write about!

Also this blog platform takes forever to upload pictures so I will be sticking the things on facebook from now on.  (I've been putting them up there anyways, and it seems silly to stick them on both.)  You should be able to see the pictures even if you don't have a facebook account--my security is set up so non-friends can't access info about me or statuses I write, but pictures are open.  (Mostly because I know not everyone has facebook and I'm far too lazy to double post photos, plus it's not like there's anything to hide in there.)  Let me know if anyone has trouble accessing them at this link or by searching for Kristin Schreiner on Facebook.  (I'm the one with the profile picture of a girl sitting in a frying pan, in case there's any confusion over multiple Kristin Schreiners.)

ANYWAYS.  October has been a very busy month.  I'm going to give a very loose outline now and write more detailed posts about things later so I can actually give interesting things the attention they deserve, and still not write an entire novel in one post.

Classes have been very busy.  We've continued going to see various performances for my Kansai Performance class--we've seen a couple matsuri (festivals), a modern dance performance, a modern play (for lack of a better term), a noh play, and takarazuka, to date.  I'm sort of working on seeing Kabuki at some point as well, slowly.  I spent a lot of my non-scheduled time this month on our main project for the Joint Seminar class, working in a group with one other AKP student and 2 Doshisha students; we watched Aladdin in both languages and looked at the translation and all the things about that.  Disney movies translate everything into Japanese--including songs and, where possible, jokes--and a lot of the characters in Aladdin also have very strong characteristic ways of speaking (the Genie and Jafar should be recognizable even without seeing any picture, I would think), so there were a lot of things to poke at in there.  And in Japanese class, we have lots of work, from readings to kanji quizzes (a several times weekly occurrence) to essays to exams to speeches to basically everything.  I am actually learning to read, I think.  It's really rather wonderful, except for the part where I spend like 2 hours every other day memorizing like 50 new words and their kanji and pronunciation and how to write them, but hey, it's good for me.  Basically, lots of hard work, but interesting hard work so it's mostly okay with me.

Finally, we've been doing fun things wherever there is free time to squeeze in.  We had a class field trip at the beginning of October, to various places including an overnight at an onsen resort!!!  (Onsennnnnnn.)  Last weekend, I went to 映画村 with a couple friends--it's basically a village worth of sets for historical movies and TV shows, with other fun things thrown in.  We had Halloween, in which most of the AKP students brought costumes to school and spent the day dressed up (I was an alien!  Because I am an alien and I sometimes have a bad sense of humor).  I went to Kiyomizudera, a famous temple in Eastern Kyoto, one day.  As I mentioned above, I went to see a couple festivals--the fire festival at Kurama (火祭) and the 時代祭, or.....era festival?  It's basically a parade of hundreds and hundreds of people dressed up in traditional garb from all the different eras of Japanese history. 

I'm sure I've left something out.  I'll find out what when I upload my pictures and go OHHH THAT THING.  And I'll give more detail over the coming....days...weeks....umm....something like that.