Well, I finally finished my presentation on American emergency management. I really have to thank Leo Bosner at FEMA, who let me use parts of his presentation on FEMA for Japanese visitors, and Maiko for helping me with the translations of slides I wouldn't have been able to do on my own. While I'm thanking people, I also want to thank my mom, Crystal Payton, who also helped me form a rudimentary idea of what emergency management is and how to talk about it.
This is going to be my first "professional" presentation in Japanese, so I am just a wee bit nervous. I'm sure it will go fine, but I have a lot of vocabulary to memorize in the next few days. While I haven't done an exact count, it seems like there are about 100 or so words that appear in my presentation that I do not know. I don't think my Japanese is bad at all, but I am much more comfortable talking about the weather, food, cultural differences, etc. than I am talking about public administration. I also don't seem to recall ever having practice conversations in Japanese class about "mutual aid agreements between jurisdictions or agencies to provide reciprocal services". To be fair to my Japanese teachers, though, it is possible that I was sick that day.
It's hard to believe that one week from now I will be well into my first week of work (OK, so I'll only be on my second day). Looking around at the mess in my bedroom, it makes me dread the ironing, folding, arranging, rearranging, packing, etc., that lays ahead. Well, I think I'll procrastinate one more night and burn a hi-MD disc. It will take me a couple of hours, but it's worth it for a single disc that holds 45 hours of music. It's better than lugging 45 CD's back and forth over the Pacific!
Lastly, I'm going to update my links on the sidebar. I have to add Hanami Sensei's Japanese Resource Page. If anyone has any interest in Japan, this is the place to go for a good collection of Japan-related links. The dictionaries listed on there were an enormous help for this presentation.
I'm also thinking of having a separate place for my friend's personal web pages or blogs. If you know me and don't mind me putting a link to your site up, let me know. Thanks!
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