winter time

I've been back in L.A. for about 12 weeks now and I honestly forgot that I once had a blog...

A recap of my 12 weeks back in America:

1) Got a free one-week layover in Japan on my Seoul-Los Angeles flight. Got to see my friend Wataru, visited Osaka, Kyoto, and Uji on my own, and met a kind lady in Nara who gave me a full on tour for free. That weekend, I met my friends Brian, Jen, and Angela in Tokyo and went to Nikko. Wataru took us to Tsukiji Sushi house and I had the best sushi of my life there. 

kinkakuji in kyoto

bustling downtown osaka at night

2) Went to Joshua tree with Kaleo the weekend I got back. It was so awesome and refreshing to be a part of the fellowship again. 

3) Started grad school the week after that. My classes included Chinese 1, Japanese Linguistics, and an art history/archaeology class on early Japanese temples. The quarter is now officially over but I'm still writing a paper for the Japanese art/archaeology class. We, as a class, asked our professor about the prompt and he replied, "Do your best!" 

4) For next quarter, I will be taking Chinese 2, Italian 1, Readings in Japanese, and a grad class on ancient city planning in East Asia. And yea, I know Italian seems a little out of place. 

5) I'm kind of on winter break. No classes to go to but my professor for my grad class assigned us nine books and a research project to start on all before his class starts in January. I don't mind reading but when each book is over 600 pages, it is a little overwhelming. As of now, I've read 5 chapters of a book on city walls and started another on the history of China. It's gonna be a looong three weeks.