Everybody saddle up for a brand new week and a brand new month! Alright, so this is the second week of this month, but I wasn't paying attention during the proper first one. But today was a regular Monday, complete with lack of sleep the night before and feeling unfocused in the morning. However, during a listening practice lesson we covered some rather interesting vocabulary to do with museum/art gallery terms and conditions, opening times etc., so maybe I'll translate some of the signs back in Southampton when I get bored. We also heard a summarising of opinions expressed in a questionnaire about the year so far and what steps were going to be taken, but I forget exactly what they were. Possibly less homework, possibly more.
So, the first tea ceremony lesson for what feels like rolled around. Today something was subtly different about the tea room - usually the hot water is stored in the corner, within an urn which looks antiquated at first glance, until one notices it's keeping itself warm electronically. Today, though, a part of the tatami flooring had been removed to reveal a small alcove (traditionally containing hot coals, I believe, but obviously in this case they'd be unnecessary) into which the urn was placed. I think the purpose of this is that it allows the heat to circulate around the room a bit better at colder times of year. When the urn is in this position procedure for mixing tea is different, but not too significantly.
In Classical Japanese we covered two kinds of verbs we'd not yet studied, but that I vaguely knew about from the SOAS course. Of course, it would have helped if last year they had told us that one of those varieties only includes one, fairly obscure verb, and so you can pretty much get by without memorising it. I spent most of the rest of the afternoon photo-ing up the blog, then there was a house meeting, in which I felt quite irritable for no apparent reason. In fact, today I was plunged into a foul mood without warning several times... perhaps it's just the time of the month when I feel particularly homesick and impatient to get everything done. Ah well, this too will pass.
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| This snapshot of my shelves and their contents seems to me to sum up my life at present. |
