Interpreting School (1): First Day

I'm not going to write lots of details so I don't get googled, but I started interpreting school yesterday, yea!  The school is a little over an hour from my house and meets every Saturday for four hours.  There was so much to do the time flew by!

Our first day went like this:

- housekeeping (paperwork, how to use the Language Lab, etc.)
- teacher self introduction - we translated this in pairs consecutively
- basic interpretation theory
- student self introductions in our second language, with questions from the class

- lunch!

- shadowing both in Japanese and in English
- reading the shadowing text aloud in Japanese and English
- a retention exercise

One day, half a binder of study material.  Oi.

How was it, you ask?  It was... okay!  I knew this wasn't an ideal situation going in - what's easy for a Japanese speaker will be hard for me and vice versa.  So when the teacher decides to start off "easy" and work her way up I get thrown in the deep end and slowly make it to the shallows.  We get material to prepare for the next class ahead of time so I'm hoping today was the worst.  It helps that my classmates (every last one female, by the way) are very nice and welcoming.

There's a lot of homework of both the "thou must" and "thou ought" variety.  Next week there's an oral vocab test where we'll get tested on 30 words from a list of 60.  On top of that we got copies from a "dictionary of current terms" as learning more words now will make upper level classes that much easier.  Other weeks we'll have a newspaper reading test on English articles about a particular subject but I'm not so worried about that because hey, English!  There's also 30 words to study in preparation for next week's lesson.

That's the required stuff.  In addition I'll be shadowing and reading aloud using the material from today's classes, doing retention exercises using an English speech, and straightening out numbers in my head (not easy!).  It's a lot of work but it'll be worth it.

The plan for today is to get my flashcards set up and start pounding away at them.  I'm a student again - I'm going to enjoy this!

Eeep

The interpreting test is two days away - eep!  I just got a voice mail (note to self: keep cell charged) that they're going to give me a Japanese test as well as the interpreting test, so could I show up a little early?

I blanched.  My heart sped up.  They did not say what form the test would take or what it would cover.  The website hints at reading aloud and an interview.

Gulp.  So until then...

Incoming - 11th and 12th

I got my first incoming mail since getting back into this penpal thing, yea!  I sent a letter to Victoria after reading her ad on Penpal of the Week and she replied with this postcard.

The front was inked up a little by another postmark, boo.

It's very fitting as there are cranes in my neighborhood - I see them flying over the houses once in a while, or fishing in the river.

I also got some mail from the Cup - I won a prize for being third in Slytherin for Ravellenic Quiddy, woo!  (If that sentence made no sense to you there's a good chance it never will.)  Along with the most delicious laceweight was this card:

"There are no good girls gone wrong - just bad girls found out."  Mae West

Love.

In other news this week I've been studying like mad for an interpreting school entrance exam on Monday.  I know I'll be asked to interpret Japanese into English and vice versa so I've been working on that specifically.  There's also a chance they'll interview me or have me read a newspaper.  Scary!  If the article is about nuclear power or bullying I'm okay but politics = death.  There's too many names of people I don't know with hints about past events I know nothing about.  Give me radiation levels or a car wreck any day.

Next correspondence in the hopper - a looooong letter to my best friend from college.  Yes, that means you, E!  It's been too long.