Day 20 Tolong! Saya kecapaian kalau begitu saya perlu hari libur

I was up until 5am last night because I was at the midnight opening of The Dark Knight Rises at the Beaverton Cinetopia yesterday. Good movie, by the way, if you haven't seen it, I suggest you do so. But anyway, I was up until 5am, so getting up at 10 am and studying Indonesian was incredibly difficult today. However, I managed to pull it off by the skin of my teeth.

Here's the rules for Day 20:

1.       Open your newspaper or magazine and continue where you left off, highlighting and reading.

2.       After 10 minutes with the newspaper, read Chapter 21 of your course book.

3.       Write in your notebook all the vocabulary from that chapter

4.       Write on the flashcards all the vocabulary from that chapter and the newspaper

5.       Find your phrasebook (Or idiom book) and begin memorizing necessary phrases.

6.       Find your Language Audio files and do lesson 14.

7.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

8.       Study flashcards before going to bed

So, today's chapter was not as complex as previous chapters, however, after yet another lesson in affixes, I think it's high time that I see if there isn't some sort of complied list of Indonesian affixes somewhere. My little Brother Dono informed me that he found a great webpage on Indonesian Affixes when he her my complaint about the strange way the course book is presenting them, so I'm gonna look into that tomorrow, during my review day, I think. I'm seriously looking forward to review day because I feel like I'm beginning to burn out. Part of me is starting to dislike the Indonesia complexities of affixes and thus wanting to skip every lesson that deals with them. But I trudge along, trying my best to reinvigorate my love of languages and my desire to complete this system.

I am coming to the conclusion, however, that the wrong book (and I'm beginning to think Tuttle Publishing's Basic Indonesia is the wrong book) can actually hinder the 30-day-language process. 100+ words a day is difficult, along with haphazard examples and explanations. You definitely need the write kinds of books or else 30 days will not be sufficient. I'm beginning to think that it might actually be better to focus on specific targets of learning for the first 2 weeks and then branch into the coursebook on day 15. I also think that it might work out better to turn it into a 60 day program instead, which would help deal with the plethora of words that I need to learn.

That being said, I still think that at the end of these 30 days, I'm going to beyond a beginner level and into the intermediate bracket. Maybe that'll be enough to prove my point and maybe that will also be enough to gain me brownie points in my future career paths in foreign relations. Or maybe not, we'll see.