It's getting serious...

G'Day!

I still haven't been able to move into my new home - for the last two weeks I have been staying at my brother's. Christoph has a 13 sqm room in a students' home on the campus and I am probably going to bother him for another week or two. My furniture and personal belongings are going to arrive tomorrow thanks to my other big brother who luckily agreed to drive all the way from Lübeck via Berlin down here - but there was one catch: He has only got time this week. Yesterday I finally found a way to store all that stuff from Berlin somewhere else in Trier until my new apartment is ready - which will be next Wednesday.

And with all that chaos in the background I had my first contact with Japanese writing yesterday - which was a bit frightening: In the very first session of the beginners' class we were to learn the writing and reading of 15 Japanese signs of the Hiragana system. I will have to work a lot more for this subject than I have ever done before... And I cannot help but feel demotivated remembering what an amount of books I will have to work my way through for some classes.

Motivation is an odd little thing. One moment it can make you feel like a champion, as if your whole life was just being right and then the next moment something happens and the motivation is gone - leaving you desperate and feeling like a downright loser. As I should have known, there are a few people in class who have some previous knowledge of the language and it can be really frustrating to sit next to somebody who is at once asking a question aloud in Japanese... That's what happened today and I just thought "What the heck is she talking about?!" At this stage I cannot even imagine how I am supposed to read, write or talk in Japanese in the future! Well, I hope it will all work out just fine.

Perhaps it is the weather that is making me feel blue. It is stormy, cold and rainy outside and I have a slight headache. Remembering that today was only the second day at university, I should not let it all get me down so easily. I will be back!

Hannah-Joe