"You must watch anime... you refer to yourself as "Kim-Chan."

This blog, in the beginning, was to chronicle my adventures in Germany. I had a blog a LONG time ago dealing with my time in Mexico and I found it to be refreshing once it was all over and I could see everything I thought about (or what have you). Sadly, in a fit of feeling dramatic, I deleted everything. I'll probably go through my pictures and my old notebooks to try to recreate that time again but the originals are lost.

Sometimes, I look back at this record and think, "Heavens. This entry is not the same tone as the rest of the blog." That and, "Oh, wow. That just sounds REALLY stupid now. I need to delete it to look more intelligent." But then I tell myself that it's fine because no one reads this thing anyway. I think maybe, at most, four people read it as a regular update on my life and my doings. To be honest, that's impressive considering I don't put much effort into making this sound somewhat coherant.

But, when I DID decide to do this again, I had to pick some fancy, flashy name to lure people in. But what? Something philosophical such as, "Aristotle and Me?" Nah. I'd get to wrapped in trying to keep it philosophical. There were a couple of others but the title of this blog comes from a couple of places. I've always been a big fan of Lewis Carroll's works (I can recite "Jabberwocky" at the drop of a hat and won a state art competition with it as my inspiration). Alice in Wonderland has always fascinated me because, well, I've just watched way too many psychological movies for my own good. Is what Alice experiencing real? Is Wonderland real and Alice a dream? I mean, it could go on. It's a metaphor for the difficulty I have dealing with the world at large. Not to go into too much detail, I am strange on some level that is not normal. A lot of things in the world fascinate me or scare me when they don't phase other people. Ergo, the metaphor.

And, Kim-Chan? Well, my affinity for languages has put me into positions where sometimes I'm dealing with professors or students who don't speak the same languages I do. The extent to my knowledge is Spanish, German, and French (my fluency in each decreases with each one). I've gotten to know a lot of the Japanese professors and they have a tendency to shorten my name (Kimberly) to just "Kim-chan." My Japanese education is... well there is none. But I do know that names are usually followed by "honorifics" (I think?). These honorifics denote the relationship that one has with another. Popular honorifics are "-san," "-sensai," "-sama..." And there're ones for familial relations as well, but you get the picture. (If anyone can correct me on the honorifics, please, let me know. I hate getting my languages wrong).

Incidentally, "-chan," means a freindly relationship (I think, again). So, it sounds nifty. Better than "Señorita Kim in Wonderland," that's for certain. Or I guess it could have been "Fräulein Kim in Wonderland," but then it would have looked bad on my part when, as I found out, it's now considered offensive in Germany to use the diminutive to refer to a young adult woman. (Frau is "Mrs." pronouced, "Frow" and the diminitive is derived from it, pronounced, "Froyline..." aren't umlauts fun?).

So, that's it. Nothing anime-weird or... whatever. Plus, I kinda worked the language angle so nothing to report on "The Spanglish-Danglish One." Sad day because I REALLY need to update that.

Cheers!