Today, I had my first sessions of my Japanese conversation and Japanese calligraphy, along with the second session of my Japanese grammar class with a different teacher (I have four different teachers for the grammar class). Apparently the homework that I was trying to do for so much of yesterday wasn't due today, it was to be started today. The schedule sheet didn't specify whether it was listing due dates or "do" dates, so I assumed the path of more work. I imagine it would have been much easier after today's class, but who knows. It might not be a bad thing to prove myself serious about things; I may wind up needing some slack later on.
Anyway, so far, I'm liking my language classes a lot. I got more speaking practice in my classes today than I usually got in a months' time back home. It actually does seem possible that I could hold a decently fluid-sounding conversation in a month or two. I will have to stop acting so shy about things outside of class though. But, an exciting thing that may help even more, even with that last bit: we can get free Japanese tutors! We just have to sign up for it and say when we're free, and the International Center will try to match us up with a tutor on-campus during class periods we have off. Awesome.
In other news, Jangmi has done its damage to Taiwan. Even now, I can't find any reliable news on the storm's effects. There are such conflicts of information as "Torrential rains and strong winds have detroyed more than 86 thousands households" vs another news source saying 86 thousand homes are without power. I can't find any two English sources that say the same thing as far as what effects there are, except that they all agree there are a lot of mudslides due to the island still being saturated from Sinlaku.
Apparently Jangmi is only the fourth most powerful storm to hit Taiwan this year. I'm starting to realize the extent to which American media sources keep us in the dark at home. If anybody reading this actually heard anything at all about Jangmi besides on my blog, please drop a comment and let me know. I'm curious.
edit: proving the news sources writing Jangmi articles in English are crap, the 4th most powerful storm thing should actually just be 4th storm. July 13th Kalmaegi as a tropical storm, July 23rd Fung-Wong and September 13th Sinlaku as category 2 typhoons, and September 28th Jangmi as a category 4.
By Wikipedia's stats, which sadly enough seem far more consistent and reliable than the general media's, the 2008 Pacific typhoon season has claimed at least 1612 human lives and "1.366 billion USD." The Atlantic season has done in 944 and "~52 billion USD." I guess that's the real reason the US media is ignoring the Pacific; they just don't know how to blow things out of proportion and defraud insurance companies over here yet.
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