2006 December 11 Monday.
My first gig of the day started off at 13:00 at the 神楽公民館英会話を楽しむ会。 Most of the members were in attendance today, and they all talked about various things. Nobody this week had such an amusing story as Mrs. A. did last week, but one member who will quit our circle at the end of this month, brought many photographs and newspaper articles, of his various experiences here in Asahikawa working as a volunteer Japanese/English language teacher and interpreter. He has met many famous people, and has had many interesting experiences throughout the years in this way. Right now he seems to be concentrating his studies on medical English in order to become a certified medical English/Japanese language interpreter. He has shown me some of his study materials in the past, and I must say that I don't know the correct pronunciations of many of the English language medical terms 医療用語. He has even invited me and the other members of our English circle to come to some of the classes for learning this skill, but I'm not sure if anyone has attended or not. I didn't go because I am busy developing eLearning applications for the study of English on the internet. This takes up all of my free time and then some. Even my father, who was a dentist, encouraged me to study hard and go to medical school, ever since I was just a young child. Unfortunately for him, I never had any interest in the medical sciences. I have always been much more interested in music and languages, for as long as I can remember. Anyway, to make a long story short, today was the last class of this year for this group of very nice people. Next week we will have a Xmas Party at the ホテルパコ from 12:00 until about 15:00. We did this very same thing last year, and you can see a photo slide show of that event by clicking here. When that class was finished at about 14:50, I hurried back to my classroom for straight classes from 15:00 until 20:00. The wonderful lady who comes to my classroom every Monday at 15:00, has just moved to Asahikawa from Kyushu only about 10 months ago. She is currently writing her LIFE STORY in English, and we spend each and every class proofreading her English compositions, and talking about various things related to her story. I never have to make that many corrections to her original written English, because it is already very easy to read and understand. She has been through some very difficult and miserable times in the past, but she seems to be much happier now. In fact, she said to me today that, she feels like she has "killed" her unpleasant past, because she has now spent many hours both thinking and writing about it. Writing and thinking about it. Then, thinking and writing about it some more. I immediately understood what she was talking about. I have seen her grow over these past 10 months, and have noticed many big changes in her attitude and appearance. She very much enjoys the writing process, and has benefited greatly from it. So have I. Writing, is thinking, in depth. Thinking deeply about something, causes a person to want to write about it. It is an iterative process that contains endless possibilities. I know from personal experience because I have been writing this blog every day for almost 2 years now, as well as many other things in the past. If you want to get better at doing something, anything, JUST DO IT.
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