We are now into our third week of being here in Reitaku University, and school just started Tuesday.
We took our placement test last week on Wednesday. Real easy thing, the worst part of the test being the heat that seemed to make me sweat buckets. That was not a very pleasant experience while taking an important placement test. Ugh. I'm just happy I brought some water to drink during the test.
No joke, only six people took the placement test. That's me, Elise, Stephan, Name, A German guy named Chris, and a guy from Bhutan named Jigme.
All the Chinese and Taiwanese were taking a different test because they already knew the characters used in Kanji though Sarah also took the test because she has much more Japanese knowledge than everyone who took my test combined. We took a special test made for non-Kanji users. Elise made a snort worthy comment before the test though, because our test placer was a real straight laced Japanese female, she said "Konnichiwa" and we didn't say anything so she was like: "I expect response from everyone!"
Elise whispered to me, "She's scary! I hope we do not have her for a teacher." All I could think about is how Germans are supposed to be scary, and here's a German sitting next to me saying a small slightly pudgy Japanese woman is scary. Elise, you ruined my fearful image of Germans. :P
Speaking of Elise, she's German, born in Germany, and she speaks English nearly fluent and is learning Japanese now. To top it off, she loves to bake, hates messy things (to the point of compulsively cleaning), can dance, and can play the piano. Oh, did I mention she's on the path to becoming a doctor? ...........whut the helllllllllllllllllllll............ She has an enemy though who she has dubbed "My enemy." That's Chris, the other exchange student from the same school as her. She says she hates his attitude, the way he talks, and his everything.... We're in the same class as him, so every time there is a remote chance of talking to him she whispers to me: "I hope I do not have to talk to my enemy..." Oh Elise.
The following day, Thursday, we had our Computer orientation, where we got our internet connection for wireless and library computers and learned what we can and can't do. All in Japanese.
'Oh shit,' I thought, 'Japanese is hard enough without mixing computers into it.'
Ends up they knew that and they had a fluent Canadian born Japanese speaker translate for us. His name is Gary, as we found out quite quickly. He's SUUUUUUPER nice too. My other friend Sarah said she was worried that he was gonna be a straight laced hard working man and really hard to talk to. Not the case at all. He was totally laid back.
We planned a trip to Kashiwa on Tuesday with him to get properly acquainted at some European bar.....in Japan.
Sunday and Monday were both really really boring days, nothing to do and everything was clooosed. Add to the fact that I don't have enough money to go shopping anyways, all I did was lay around. By the way, thanks guys for forcing me to pack my PSP. It was a real life saver during these two days. I must have played for four hours each day, and then I went and watched all the movies in my computer and organized all my folders. Then I cleaned my room a bit and made some miso soup. Boring?? Hell yes. Sounds just like what I did at home in America, minus the plus amounts of video games and the internet access.
Then Tuesday comes, our first days of class. We had Japanese for three periods. Classes in Japan are different in High School than they are in college. There are six periods, each one is 90 minutes long, and usually one class only occurs once a week. Classes start at 9am, not bad, and they end at 6pm. There is no overlap either. If you have two classes you wanna take in one time period, you have to choose one. That has to be the worst part about it probably.
Tuesday night is the night we arranged to meet with Gary, so right after class we rush over to the campus' main cafeteria. Sarah was super worried about being late: "Oh no,what if we missed him, what if he left already." She got even more worried when he wasn't there. But then she saw the other people we were going with and she calmed down. After about ten minutes of waiting around, we decided to buy some food while we were waiting for him. The second we were about to put our money into the order machine, in walks Gary. Sarah freezes, her money right at the slot and she says "....Uh, sorry, are we not supposed to eat...?" Her nails were barely gripping onto the very edge of the coin as Gary scratched his head. Then he's just like, "No, go ahead! I'm not stopping you."
He looked tired and a little messy, so Sarah says, "What's wrong, did you just take a hard test?"
"Noooo....I overslept." That's it. That's all he said. Sarah's image of him was totally obliterated. It was really amusing.
We went to the bar for a few hours, and I did buy a drink because I am at the appropriate age to drink in Japan. The legal age is actually 20, that applies for everything, drinking, smoking, and driving. I didn't like my drink at all, it was nasty, so I only drank a sixth of what I had. My friend Daichi ended up finishing it for me. Oh, the drink was a tri-colored "Girl" drink called Dolche.
Dolche!!
It was actually pretty strong though, probably a 15% alcohol content. That's probably why i didn't like it, like, at all.
Another girl named Saki got a drink called Tarantula. It had a freaking 30% alcohol content. There was a worse one available though. The alcohol is actually illegal in America, it's an 80% alcohol content. I don't remember what it was called, unfortunately.
It's Thursday today, and the Typhoon that hit yesterday passed rather quickly, Classes were cancelled yesterday because of the typhoon, and Sarah and I actually walked through it to pick up some stuff to eat for a while. It was fun, but the umbrella broke and I was borrowing it. It wasn't fun carrying everything home in that weather either......
I finally got my scholarship money today, I just have to go to the bank to make sure i have it and go to REIC, our International department, to sign for it.
I'll try to update tomorrow now that I've caught up.
Ciao for now, lots of loves,
Nikki.
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