My own, personal status update!
This is to let my readers know what the hell I've been doing.

Well, I'm back from Helen, GA. - but not for long.

First of all, my plans on translating articles manually fell through; I realized that I didn't have a printer hooked up to this PC, so I had no way of accessing the articles offline. I ended up writing down a few phrases that I wanted to learn from my 四文字熟語 book. A Yomojijukugo is like a Japanese idiom - 4 kanji that end up making a phrase.

Here's an example:

一所懸命 - "With all your might"

Now, when you examine the kanji in that set individually, the literal meanings really don't contribute that much to the overall English meaning. But when you put all four of them together, you end up with a phrase.
The reason I'm trying to learn a lot of these is because Japanese is littered with them. And, a lot of dictionaries don't have yomojijukugo in them, meaning, if you run into one that you don't know, you'll sort of be hosed. As such, I am trying to learn some.

Anyway, back on topic. I have had no updates Wednesday - Friday because of my trip. And today and tomorrow, there won't be any updates either - this is because a lot of the Japanese press is off for New Year's. New Year's (known as お正月) is the most important holiday in Japan. So, rather than taking off December 20th or so to January XXth like Western societies, Japan takes December 26th - January 5th off. Anyway, news will be back to normal on Monday, so expect at least one story out of me.

However, I am not completely sure about Tuesday and Wednesday, because I am going back to USC. One of my friends who lives up there is coming to Atlanta to chill with me Tuesday, so I am not sure I will have time. And Wednesday, I will be moving back into my dorm. But Thursday through Sunday shouldn't be a problem. After that, I start classes again. My schedule for this coming semester is infinitely better than that of last semester - I start later, and end earlier. The only problem is, I have 4 classes MWF, and only 15 minutes between each class. But this shouldn't be too big of a deal, because I don't like that much time between my classes bullshitting around.

Anyway, till Monday.