こんにちは。...

...is just about all I can say right now.  "Hello."  I primarily speak English, but I can also communicate in Spanish (at the level of a small child), Matlab, and Java (though I can really only talk to my computer and other programmers with the last two).  Although I studied Spanish for 7 years and probably could've placed out of most of my language requirement with it, I opted to start from scratch with Japanese 101 freshman year.  I wanted to try something completely new for reasons I can't quite pinpoint.  When I talk about my Japanese class (which I do quite a bit), my friends usually say something along the lines of "how brave!" but I know they're really thinking "idiot."  I understand the sentiment; languages are certainly not my forte and I've been struggling to memorize even just the alphabet (albeit a lot of the alphabet all at once) when it seems like my classmates either already learned it or are coasting right through with their eidetic memories (ohhh, princeton, I can never tell with you).  Nevertheless, i think it will be incredibly neat to speak a language that's completely different from English and it will be even neater to show up my many bilingual friends--most of whom speak Mandarin or Korean--in at least one Asian language.