Yay All English Post!

Now that I can actually write in English, I can expand my bio a little bit. I am an Egyptian-American from the great state of New Jersey studying biochemistry as a first year at Barnard College. When I was in elementary school, my friend brought us manga books she got from the library. We all thought we were so cool reading those books and we would read as much as we could during class. Since that time, I continued reading manga after elementary school and soon became interested in Japanese culture. I decided that during college I wanted to study abroad in Japan, and since Barnard requires four semesters of a language to graduate, I thought taking Japanese was the perfect opportunity for me to go. I had no idea what was in store for me when I took this class.
For me, the class gives me mixed feelings about the language. In terms of speaking and reading, the class is not challenging. The characters are pretty easy to learn if you practice a lot and since Japanese is only high and low tones, pronunciation isn't that difficult. However, Japanese grammar is unlike anything I am used to. For me, Arabic is my first language and English is my second. However, growing up with both languages together, it was easy for me to understand the grammar of both and be able to switch between them. But Japanese grammar is completely different from both languages and I have to learn it at the ripe old age of eighteen. Because of that, sometimes the class can get a little challenging as I try to switch to a completely new grammar structure. But overall, Japanese is definitely my favorite class and I can't wait to be able to travel to Japan and speak to the natives.

 My first manga!