Hi Geoff,

Just checking in.

November has been another great month. I have adjusted to life with my new host family. They are a lot of fun, but I will only be with them until the end of December. My host mother is an english teacher, and so has been very helpful to me in my study of Japanese.

In school, this Friday, Saturday, Monday and Tuesday are all test days. Today I tested in math, and tomorrow I test in english. In math I feel like I understood the majority of the questions, but the english test may be harder, as it will mostly be words I have to translate from Japanese. Also, I only just learned how to properly use "whom" yesterday. I am looking forward to seeing the results...

These are the only classes that the coordinator at my school wants me to test in this time around, but next time I may also be taking biology. The hardest part of this is reading the characters. When a teacher explains the question to me I can mostly understand, but reading is very dificult. As of right now I can read maybe 200 of the 2000 Kanji that I need to be considered literate.

Hansi
(outbound youth exchange student)