Language Rambles (Japanese, Dutch and Norwegian)

[appelkoekje]

Welcome back to the forum, appelkoekje! As a Brit, my interest was immediately peaked by the mention of tea... I wish you success and joy with all your language goals here!

Thanks very much! You too!

[appelkoekje]

04/08/2018 - UPDATE

I write this three hours after coming home from being with aforementioned Japanese language partner.

We planned to meet at 1PM. I got to the meeting place, and got a message from her. 「迷子です。」(I'm lost) I knew from that moment, today would be great.

We were meeting purely for language practice, and as she's new to the area, for me to give her a little tour and help her familiarise herself with the city. Almost 4 hours later, we were getting on like we had known each other for years! We switched between English and Japanese; her English was better than she had originally let on. It was comfortable, and I had a lot of fun speaking in Japanese with her. Conversation flowed, laughs were had. It was the perfect language exchange! We both messed up a lot, but we laughed off our mistakes, and eventually brought them up again as jokes later on. I found myself just speaking without worrying about pronunciation or making any mistakes. We helped each other formulate sentences, looked up on Google, used hand motions, used Google images... every tool at our dispense. It was great being able to just freely laugh about our mistakes or lack of vocabulary There was a language barrier at times, but we overcame it. It was my first time speaking Japanese in real life in about ... 3 years? So I was an absolute bag of nerves. I realised shortly after meeting her, it was for nothing. Possibly the best experience I've had in Japanese thus far. It has reinvigorated my passion for it - as well as language learning as a whole - I want to study it more so I can freely talk with her and get to know her. Being able to speak to someone in their native language truly is an experience, it opens up a whole new door. I really needed this! I can't thank her enough for such a wonderful day. She was great company. We're both looking forward to hanging out again.

Now, enough gushing over today! Time for a more general update.

The Netherlands was great. My understanding of Dutch is coming along nicely. I didn't use it as much as I would have liked but I was satisfied being able to understand more of it this time around. It's starting to "click". I do spend every evening of my life listening to my boyfriend speak in Dutch so some of it must be going in To help with all this passive intake, I've started using Teach Yourself Dutch again. I'm already on Unit 3 and I'm fascinated at how much I recognise purely from just hearing it being said before. It also solved a mystery for me. My boyfriend is from the south of the Netherlands, so when we visit, most of my time is spent there. In the south, when leaving a store, or saying goodbye, the Dutch say something that sounded like "ahdo" to my untrained ears. For the longest time, I never knew what they were saying. I'd even replicate it myself but I never really knew what it was. Well, TY: Dutch addresses it in Unit 1! Apparently, they say, "howdo". My mind was blown. Finally! After almost a year of wondering! I asked my boyfriend and he would just tell me "it's what we say when we leave...". Which... is exactly what it is, it's just another way of saying "bye". Interesting! I'm planning to continue with TY Dutch for now, as it is filling in a lot of gaps!

Norwegian... I haven't looked or thought about it in a while. I'm considering switching to Swedish (again). While I love Norwegian, I also love Swedish, and I feel like Swedish has more resources and is just more ... regulated. Whereas with Norwegian, resources are sparce, bokmål is only spoken in certain areas, dialects are rampant... I feel it might be easier to go from Swedish to Norwegian, rather than the other way around! So... watch this space! My next update may be about Svenska

As for Japanese, I'm planning to get serious with it again. I really need to increase my vocabulary, so each day I'm reading an article in Japanese and making a note of the new words I come across. I'm trying to really broaden my knowledge, so yesterday I read an article on the heat wave in Japanese, today it was an article on space and Space-X, then I read a Wikipedia article on a famous murder. I usually would read it in English, but I figured, let's read it in Japanese. I was surprised at how much I could read! It was very motivating (and interesting... and maybe gruesome) Tomorrow, I'll try to read an article on politics. It's time to really up my vocabulary!

All in all, doing great. Feeling motivated and ready to learn languages!

[Teango]

Language exchanges can be so much more fun and motivating in person than online over a poor Skype or WhatsApp connection, especially when discovering or showing someone around a new place and laughing past each other's mistakes (this really takes the pressure off). Well done on scoring lots of speaking practice during your tour, especially if it's your first time chatting in Japanese for real!

[Sizen]

お返事が遅れてすみません！
ありがとうございます！そう言ってもらえて嬉しいです。
Sizenさんのログを読ませていただきました。日本語を使いこなせていて、感動しました。
本当に勉強熱心ですね。私は見習わないと…！
まず、２級を狙って勉強していきたいと思っています。私の語彙力がほんとに足りないんですよ(;´･ω･)

勉強熱心とは少し違う気もしますが、まあ、そう解釈してもらっても構いませんよ。^^;
本当のことを言えば、僕はただ好きなことを気が向いた時にやっているだけなので、勉強とかそういう感じは全然しないんですよね。
でも、その分、進歩も遅いし、スキルも偏っているところもあったりします。
こう見えていざ話すとなると全然ダメなんですよ、僕。
appelkoekjeさんみたいに日本人と交流する機会を作らないといけないですね。

にしても、appelkoekjeさんの日本語、本当に日本人っぽくてすごいですね。
どこで日本語を覚えたんですか？日本に住んだこととかあります？

[appelkoekje]

Language exchanges can be so much more fun and motivating in person than online over a poor Skype or WhatsApp connection, especially when discovering or showing someone around a new place and laughing past each other's mistakes (this really takes the pressure off). Well done on scoring lots of speaking practice during your tour, especially if it's your first time chatting in Japanese for real!

They're so much more enriching! Most of my speaking practice has been when playing online games with Japanese friends, so the goal wasn't to practice per say, but to communicate and survive But I was limited to small, short sentences regarding the game, so it didn't really feel like conversation practice. At university, I was lucky enough to have a group of exchange students I often hung around with, so I had a lot of practice then, but that was 3 years ago. I haven't spoken a word since. So it was refreshing to know I could still do it! Albeit this time I had way more confidence Definitely looking forward to our next meeting.

勉強熱心とは少し違う気もしますが、まあ、そう解釈してもらっても構いませんよ。^^;
本当のことを言えば、僕はただ好きなことを気が向いた時にやっているだけなので、勉強とかそういう感じは全然しないんですよね。
でも、その分、進歩も遅いし、スキルも偏っているところもあったりします。
こう見えていざ話すとなると全然ダメなんですよ、僕。
appelkoekjeさんみたいに日本人と交流する機会を作らないといけないですね。

にしても、appelkoekjeさんの日本語、本当に日本人っぽくてすごいですね。
どこで日本語を覚えたんですか？日本に住んだこととかあります？

>でも、その分、進歩も遅いし、スキルも偏っているところもあったりします。
すっごくわかります！
私も好きなことで日本語を勉強したので、ゲームのことならペラペラ話せますし、ゲームの専門語がよく分かりますが、経済や政府や理学のことなら、全然話せないんですよね。

>appelkoekjeさんみたいに日本人と交流する機会を作らないといけないですね。
おすすめ！(笑)
ほんとに楽しいですよ。あと、ネイティブがよく使う言い回しを覚えれます！
私の日本語のゴールは、ネイティブに近いレベルになることなので、どうしても自然な日本語に浸かりたいですね(笑)
言語交流サイトでパートナーを探したらいいと思います！Sizenさんの日本語はもうハイレベルなので、日本人がびっくりするんでしょう(笑)

>にしても、appelkoekjeさんの日本語、本当に日本人っぽくてすごいですね。
どこで日本語を覚えたんですか？日本に住んだこととかあります？

いやー、うれしい。それこそゴールなのです！(笑)
実は、日本に行ったことがありません 来年行こうと思っていますが！
主に、日本人と話すことで日本語を覚えました。2年間くらい日本人と一緒にファイナルファンタジー14やっていて、なんとなく日本語を覚えてきました。
それに、日本のドラマを日本語字幕付きで見たり、小説を読んだり、音楽を聞いたりしました。今でも、こうして勉強しています。
言語交換していたら、話し相手の言い方とかを真似しました。あ、日本人がこう言うのかー。じゃあ、今度使ってみる！みたいな感じで。(笑)

とても偉そうに書いてしまってすみません！でも、こんな感じで勉強しています。

間違いだらけの文章なんですが！(笑)　勘弁してくださいね！

[Sizen]

...

＞私も好きなことで日本語を勉強したので、ゲームのことならペラペラ話せますし、ゲームの専門語がよく分かりますが、経済や政府や理学のことなら、全然話せないんですよね。
僕の場合、あんな突っ込んだ話はもちろん、日常会話すら成り立たないくらいですから、本当に困っています。^^;
もともと母国語でもあまり自ら進んで他人と話す性格じゃないですから、外国語となるとなおさら酷いですよ。
でも、フランス語を勉強していた時、本とかゲームで勉強しているうちに自然と話せるようになったので、日本語もいつかそうなるんじゃないかって思っています。

＞実は、日本に行ったことがありません 来年行こうと思っていますが！
おお、ついに念願の日本旅行ですね！どこに行こうと思っていますか？
僕は４回も行っているので、もちろん日本人の友達に聞いてみるのもいいですが、観光地のおすすめとかなら僕にもいつでも聞いてくださいね。

＞私の日本語のゴールは、ネイティブに近いレベルになることなので、どうしても自然な日本語に浸かりたいですね(笑)
僕も日本人並みに話せるようになりたいので、お互い頑張りましょうね。(^○^)
先はまだまだ長いでしょうけど、きっといつかなれると信じています！

＞2年間くらい日本人と一緒にファイナルファンタジー14やっていて、なんとなく日本語を覚えてきました。
道理でうまいわけですね。さすがです。
実は僕もFF14を始めようと思っていました。最近初代WoWのことで懐かしくなっていたし、ちょうど時間を持て余しているので、暇つぶしにはもってつけなんじゃないかな、と思っていました。
それに日本語のいい練習にもなるでしょうから、いわゆるウィンウィンですね。
日本人だけのFCにうまく溶け込めるのか不安ですけど、何かいいアドバイスありますか？まだやるって決めていませんけど。

[appelkoekje]

Another messy general update...

Having a busy few weeks at work, getting back into a routine after a week off in the Netherlands is proving difficult! The only language I've been focusing on is Japanese mainly, I've been doing a little Dutch in the evenings but nothing to write home about. Norwegian has completely taken the back seat, unfortunately.

There's a good reason to why, though. Or, well, at least I think so. Japanese has taken over currently as this week and last I've been very fortunate to have several interactions with native speakers out in the wild. Just yesterday, after work, I went to a Japanese-English language meet-up in a multilingual (!) library in my city. Unfortunately, I was about 30 minutes late due to British transport being as unreliable as can be, but I still managed to get a good hour out of it before everyone packed up and went home.

Before the event, I met my friend whom I met last week, the native Japanese speaker who had just moved here. I'd just completed a full day of work completely in English so switching to Japanese when I met her proved difficult I could understand everything she said to me but my brain wasn't fully in Japanese mode so I was unable to give good replies. I think she could sense that it was a combination of, suddenly having to switch and tired after a long day. We arrived at the event, and I poked my head through the door and was met with a healthy chorus of こんばんはs!

We sat down, and there were 4 native Japanese speakers, 4 English people, 1 Italian and 1 Spaniard. Quite the selection! At the event was another native speaker I'd spoken to online but we could never find a good time to meet up, so it was nice to see her finally! After a while, we were asked to give 自己紹介 (self introductions). Now, in a text chat format, I can do this so easily. However, when you're sat at a table and there are roughly 6 sets of eyes looking at you... I suddenly forgot who I was, what age I was, what work I did...! I was saved by some people asking questions, though. That got the Japanese flowing

One of the native speakers happened to be a lecturer at a University in the town over. She taught Japanese studies, and was a pleasure to talk with. We all had to introduce our favourite Japanese word. I chose 奇跡 (miracle). One of the other learners was unsure what it meant and how to use it, so the Japanese lecturer very kindly gave us a mini lesson on the word 奇跡, how it's used, and even example sentences! It was very helpful.

We all agreed to meet again soon, and most left after an hour. Some of us stayed behind to help one of the natives with a University experiment. She is studying linguistics and it was a simple word association test. One of the people who stayed behind knew a cute cafe in China Town, so we (mostly ran) went there through the rain. We spent the rest of the night talking in a mixture of Japanese and English, drinking jasmine tea and eating delicious authentic Chinese food. It was a wonderful evening

The more I use Japanese in real life, the more I realise my active vocabulary is lacking! I can understand mostly everything said to me, however, it takes me some time to respond. Hence the motivation for Japanese, I really want to improve my active vocabulary and work on output. As most of my Japanese learning has been online and on computers, I've not had much opportunity to speak it in a real life environment, so I guess I never knew I had this "hurdle" to cross, as it were. Looking forward to seeing how my speaking improves over the next few weeks/months!

[appelkoekje]

Good morning,

I'm going to name this update "an exciting discovery". (Skip to how my languages are going if you don't want to read me gush about a multilingual library)

Yesterday, I met up with my Japanese language partner again. Though, I don't quite think that's the right term for it as we mainly meet just to hang out and speak a mixture of the languages The weather wasn't looking too great but we had a day full of activities planned. We started the day off by going to a multilingual library in my city. It's tucked away inside a shopping centre. I had no idea of it's existence until I met with the Japanese-English exchange group last week, as some of the members there worked at the library on a volunteer basis. They mentioned it in passing, and I was intrigued, so I thought before we got onto our main activities for the day we'd just drop by. I didn't have high hopes, I guess. My main city library has a foreign language section but it's dedicated to the most spoken languages in the city as well as popular languages in Europe: Chinese, Urdu, Polish, Russian, French, Spanish, German and Italian. Fantastic selection if you are learning any of those languages - which unfortunately I am not, so you can imagine why I was a little cynical about the multilingual language library.

Boy, I'm so glad I was wrong. To sum it up, it is a language learner's paradise.

They had a wide selection of books in every language you could imagine. Catalan, Icelandic, Norwegian, Mongolian, Korean, Japanese, Finnish... to name a few. Name a language, they probably had a book in it.

It's my understanding most of their books were donated by universities, or by volunteers / members of the public. They've done a fantastic job as they have a collection to brag about. As it is a library, you can only lend the books, and some are quite old, but there was a healthy selection of modern fiction and non-fiction books as well... as far as I could discern from the covers, anyway

For someone who has had an interest in languages since I was young, and always thought my city was limited in what it could offer, this was a very exciting discovery. My friend and I must have spent about 2 hours oo-ing and aw-ing over the variety of languages, trying to read them, talking about the countries, what languages they speak etc. A great deal of fun. I eyed up the Norwegian/Swedish section... I love to read, and I especially love to read in foreign languages, and my main goal with my "hobby language" Norwegian is just to be able to read in it - so you can imagine how excited I was to see almost 3 medium sized book cases full of Norwegian books As well as in the childrens section, they had tons of children books in Norwegian as well, from activity books to fiction novels!

The Japanese section was a little smaller but it still had 3 shelves dedicated to Japanese novels, and a whole bookcase with more academic focused books. I found one on translation which I'm very tempted to pick up next time I visit. Also a few novels I'm interested in. As it's a library, it'll have a deadline, so it'll probably urge me to actually read them I'm very excited to visit next Saturday and get some books out!

How my languages are going

Japanese is 順調. I had a bit of a crisis the other day I've more or less set up camp in the intermediate plateau. My crisis, as I sat around my metaphorical campfire, was that I want to improve my vocabulary by studying more actively, as in, picking a reading material aimed at native speakers and making notes of the new words, adding them to Memrise, and studying them. The idea itself is fine, it's just finding articles with vocabulary I'm going to use. I've been reading a lot of news articles recently, I've been trying to keep it fresh, going for a different category every time - politics, science, society, weather - which is fine and all, but after a while, you realise the vocabulary isn't that different from article to article. I read a nice article about Space-X the other day, got some nice space vocabulary, but the other 80% of the article didn't hold anything new because I'd already picked up on it in another article. It could be I just need to give the news a rest A lot of Japanese news articles follow the same formula more or less. The contents is interesting though, and it does allow for me to talk about current events in Japan, which is always a bonus. But yesterday caused the crisis. I sat down to find an article and I went through every category, and it was all just doom and gloom. The main articles for the day were, "woman swept into river dies," "two teenagers hit by a truck have died," "hot weather in Japan has killed X people," ... my Memrise deck is already looking a bit worrying after reading a wikipedia article on a famous American murder in Japanese, so I figured, I could deal with less doom and gloom in there

But then I sort of sat there like, "what do I use now?" You might have noticed I said I don't look at entertainment or music articles. I did venture into a few, but alas, they followed the same formula, and were quite short. The only things I'd be picking up from there is names of actors and actresses, and maybe reinforcing some words I encountered in a previous article.

I do think, I need to give the news a rest.

Wikipedia has been fun, but it's getting tiring thinking of a topic to read about every day Not to mention, the articles themselves are very long, so it's quite time consuming. I do have some websites I visit, both aimed at women, one is like Reddit I guess, the other is more of a forum, where women go to post their worries about love, life, marriage, health etc. I think I might lurk about on those websites more, as they are fantastic for vocabulary and new ways of saying things, as language is ever evolving. My only concern is that the language is very 日常生活 (daily life), so I won't really be getting a lot of new vocabulary in the way of more specific topics (politics, society etc) but I guess it's handy because, it'll be words I'll actually use I guess? Can't hurt.

tends to the campfire

I'm having no problems with practicing output lately, I know that to improve in speaking and writing, I need to just speak and write, no two ways about it - they'll improve on their own, and slowly, passive knowledge will become active knowledge. I'm very fortunate to have ample opportunities to do both, so I'm not worried about that. Listening, as well. If I'm too tired to sit down and actually study, I just watch a drama in Japanese, or listen to a Japanese podcast. So, my main concern right now, is just upping my knowledge and finally jumping into advanced territory. I'll keep pushing on!

Norwegian and Dutch... both have unfortunately taken a back seat, I've had a particularly rough week in terms of my work commute. I haven't been getting home until 7:30, by the time I eat dinner, do chores and sit myself down, it's 8:30 and I'm usually exhausted. Dutch is at the level where I really need to blast through a guided course or two, then I can realise myself into the Dutch wilderness. Norwegian as well, however, I am flirting with idea of Swedish again, so I'm not too worried about my lack of progress as I might be hopping over to Swedish soon, we will see!

I'm hoping to find a new job soon because my days are very long with this job (I leave the house at 7am, home at 7:30pm if traffic is bad) and thus it is leaving with me 0 energy for anything, let alone languages. So I am forgiving myself for not keeping on top of all my languages. I still need to find a nice way to include Dutch and Norwegian into my commute. Maybe a Memrise deck, or Duolingo. We shall see.

Enough rambling for today! Congratulations if you've made it this far!

[appelkoekje]

Those with a keen eye may notice I have changed the title of my log. I feel this more reflects what I do here I ramble on about languages. I treat my log like a diary, I guess, I come here to share my thoughts, my successes and my failures. But today I'd like to ramble on some more about language learning methods, and the wall I've seemed to hit - and something I want to try!

We'll start with the 'something I want to try'. In Japan, there is such a thing as... 読書の秋. Autumn reading, I guess? I'm not too sure of it's origins, but I feel it might have been a marketing ploy to get more people reading. Either way, autumn will be soon upon us, and the Japanese like to spend it reading. I love autumn, it's a cozy month of hot drinks, warm jumpers and sitting on the couch with a blanket as the dark nights start to creep in. It's my absolute favourite season! To celebrate it, I'm going to try (key word: TRY) and finish one of my many Japanese novels that have begun to collect dust. My idea of 読書の秋 might become 読書の秋 as I'm not a terribly fast reader in Japanese But it's my way of motivating myself to finally finish a novel. I've roughly 10 novels in Japanese, and I think I've read about 3 of them. I realise I have a treasure trove of vocabulary, grammar and expressions sat lined up neatly on my desk, and yet I have the gall to complain here about lack of reading materials and getting sick of the news

So my goal for the Autumn Reading Challenge (we'll call it!) is to finish at least one novel in Japanese. I don't know if this will be from my personal collection, or I'll take a book out from the multilingual library. That way, I have a bit more motivation (a time limit, if you will, as I will have to renew it) and I can help support the library (paid membership! one off payment, but still).

If, by some miracle, I manage to finish it before my goal, I'll probably start another one, either from the Multilingual Library or my own personal collection. My reward? Hopefully, better Japanese and maybe a new novel

I'm really excited for this and I'm looking forward to tracking my progress. I am thinking about making a bullet journal to help track my language studies in a more traditional way, and for making notes / keeping track of vocabulary as I go. I'm looking forward to see how I can combine the two. One thing I love is mixing creativity with language learning. But that's a tale for another day!

I've been keeping up with output. Chatting with natives almost daily on Hellotalk. Just text chat, though I have been tempted to try calling some people on the weekends to get more conversation practice when I'm not meeting with my language partner. I've found a cute anime series called 一週間フレンズ which I've been enjoying in the evenings with Japanese subtitles. It's a slice of life anime, so quite simple vocabulary / dialogue, and it's about two friends. The girl has a condition which means at the beginning of every week, she forgets 'friends'. She remembers everything else fine, but if she makes a friend, she forgets the memories made with them, and the friend. Yes, a weird plot, but it's relaxing to watch and each episode is ~24 mins! It isn't too taxing.

Dutch ...
I'll let you in on a secret. I may be moving to the Netherlands next year! We're still in talks, but my boyfriend is eager to go back, and I would love to live there. The idea is that, when we move there, I'll attend language classes, so I would be lying if I said that has killed my motivation to study a little... but at the same time, it's also really kick-fired it too. I'm a little undecided ! But I do know that the last time we were there for a week, I felt incredibly frustrated that I could not communicate with his family or friends. I've been very much welcomed into the Dutch 'circle', but I do sit there and smile for most of it, as they all converse in Dutch around me, and even look at me and try to get me in on the joke, for me to look at my boyfriend like ...help? They know I can't speak very much Dutch, but with each visit I understand more and more, so I wonder if it's their way of helping? I appreciate that they try to make me feel involved! I'm not sure when we're next visiting, but I do know I want to be more conversational by then. I have a long weekend this week (yay for bank holidays!) so I might sit down and figure out a schedule for Dutch.

Norwegian... is a pretty nice language I know some words in?
I have my hands so full with Japanese and Dutch right now, that I seriously can't find the time for it, which is a shame. It has unfortunately taken a major back-seat for now. I might re-visit it again in future, but honestly, I'm thinking about switching to Swedish (again again again!) but I'll wait until I've a nice schedule made up.

Plans for this weekend are as follows...
* Japanese meet-up on Friday. We've been given some "homework", or maybe, stuff to prepare for it. A word to introduce in Japanese, a word to introduce in English, and finally an interesting sentence or phrase in Japanese. Going to dig through my vocab decks and see what I can find! Also looking forward to seeing what everyone else has to introduce to the group.
* Multilingual library visit (solo this time) on Saturday. Hoping to pick up some books in Japanese. I might pick up a childrens book in Swedish or Norwegian, we shall see how much the wanderlust compels me!
* Family outing on Sunday, possibly all day, but I'll try and get some 朝勉 done in the form of reading or vocab revision!
* Monday, I have a rare day off. I might make this schedule day and get some serious studying done.

[appelkoekje]

A little update, while it's fresh.

I went to the Japanese meet-up tonight. Smaller turn out this week. My friend I brought was the only native there. She doesn't speak a lot of English so she was very nervous! It seemed the idea to all introduce words we'd learned in Japanese or English was scrapped (probably due to the turnout) and instead we played a game. There were cards with items on, and we each took turns trying to say the names of the items in Japanese. Admittedly, it's a game for beginners, which a majority of the group are, but I would be lying if I said I didn't learn some new words! It was quite fun trying to guess some of the words, (snowflake 結晶, 竜の落とし子 seahorse, 焚き火 camp fire) ... all quite simple words, but words I've never really used... goes to show there are still some gaps in my knowledge! It was a fun activity. I would've liked to talk in Japanese more, but there were around 2-3 members who would have been completely left out if the conversation was purely Japanese, so it was understandable. I spent most of the time translating the main points of the conversation to my friend The other members did a fantastic job of making her feel welcome and involved despite her lack of English! Quite a pleasant evening.

One of the members/organisers had previously posted on the Facebook group she was having a clearout, and was asking if anyone would like anything. She had a selection of books and magazines in Japanese, I spotted a novel I quite liked the look of, "花散る頃の殺人" and asked if I could kindly take it off her hands. She brought it today! I had completely forgot I asked for it. It seems its a series of books about a character, 女刑事音道貴子 female detective Otomichi Takako and I guess this book is centered around a case. It seems like a good detective book, so I've selected it to be the book I will read for my 読書の秋 challenge I'll start reading it next Saturday.

I've a voice call scheduled with a Japanese speaker tomorrow around 12PM. I got in touch with her on HelloTalk, after asking in the moments section if anyone would like to practice speaking. My native speaker friend is going to France this weekend, so I figured I would make sure I still get some practice this week. I'm a little nervous, as I much prefer face-to-face, but also looking forward to it.

I'll update tomorrow after the call!