Monday, April 14
Guys, three more weeks of classes and that's it! I can't believe time has flown so fast, it's scary!!
Guys, three more weeks of classes and that's it! I can't believe time has flown so fast, it's scary!!
On the way to school today, I studied for my test. I took the late train, so I didn't have much time before class. The station was bad this morning; people rushing to get somewhere crashed into me over 5 times! It hurt.
The test ended up being pretty easy. I'm not doing as badly as I thought I would now that we're into chapters I never learned! On the last test, which was the first that covered things I haven't learned, I was the only one who got an A!
For reading & writing, we had Kandou sensei. She had us play Jeopardy. It was boys against girls and Natalia elected to not be on a team, and be the score keeper instead (since there're more girls than guys).
So at one point, we were tied with the boys, when we got this really hard question worth 400 points. It asked the meaning of "itamitome", which none of us had ever heard of!
It was written like:
痛み止め
With "ita" and "to" in kanji. Then I had an idea! I've noticed you can usually figure out what a word means by looking at the meanings of the kanji.
I knew the second kanji meant "stop", so I asked Tina what the first kanji meant. She said it was the kanji for "ita", like in "itai", which is the Japanese word for "painful". So I was like "stop pain?"
And Heather was all like "medicine?"
And I was like "yeah, like painkillers!"
So we all guessed painkillers and we ended up being right!! It was awesome!
All the boys had been cracking up when we first got the question, so sure we wouldn't get it, and when we first saw it, we figured we wouldn't get it either. But we did!! It was so awesome!
When sensei revealed the answer, we all screamed and high fived each other, haha.
So with that huge advantage, we ended up beating the boys. :)
But sensei didn't have prizes today... :(
During the break between classes, Natali had let me use her pocket wifi so I could see if Hikari from the photography club had responded. I'd emailed her this morning asking for the room number again. And she had! It was in F building where we'd gone last week, but was on the 3rd floor, where we hadn't gone.
I also ran to Lawson's with Dylan so I could buy a bento for lunchtime. All the bentos had noodles in them, and I don't like eating noodles in front of people, haha, so I got rice paper veggie rolls and one of those fruit and cream filled sandwhiches with three bear stickers!
Natalia and I ran over to F after class. There were a few Japanese students in there already, who turned out to be the photography club officers. The one in the center who must have been the president was super cute, btw.
Natalia left to go buy a bento and I sat there and started eating, because everyone else was eating their lunch. Then some ichinensei showed up as well. Natalia got back pretty quickly and then Natsumi, the girl I'd been emailing and had met that day showed up as well. She came over and explained that the meeting would start and then we might go around and do introductions or something.
So the meeting started and they read minutes from the last meeting and then had a mini debate because one of the guys wasn't sure about something and kind of arguing about it, but not in a mean way or anything.
Then everyone started going around and saying places they wanted to go in Japan, because the club was planning a trip. Most people were saying Takayama, which is the place Manaka's dad was telling me about with the giant walls of snow. I want to go there too!
When it got to Natalia and me, I said Okinawa and everyone liked that and started talking a bit about Okinawa. Then the meeting was over! So short!
Natsumi came over to explain to Natalia and me that we couldn't use digital cameras (contrary to what she'd told me when she'd met with me over their haruyasumi...), and they'd let us borrow film cameras, but we'd have to buy the film ourselves.
That pretty much killed anymore lingering interest I had in joining. Film is really expensive and I'd rather spend my money on other things, especially when I only have a month left. But Natalia is really into it and is going to go buy film.
Anyway, Natsumi said to email her so we could find a time to go see the dark room on campus. I'm excited about that though!
After the meeting, Natalia and I went to the green area. We found Emma eating by herself (she does that every day, eats at the green area and people watches) so we sat with her for a bit until class started.
I ate the Koala March I got from the matsuri yesterday (the one snack that I was smart and kept for myself) and here is a cute zebra koala!
Then Emma and I headed to calligraphy. We were carving our stone stamps again. Mine is sooo difficult! I should have picked easier kanji, but I wanted the same ones as are on my inkan. #cateproblems
I was sure I wouldn't finish by the end of class, but I actually did!! It looks pretty bad because I accidentally carved over some of the kanji (where I wasn't supposed to), so it looks pretty broken up, but you can still read what it says and tell which characters they're supposed to be, and I'm fine with that.
Yay!! Next week we have to pick kanji that we like because we're going to make legitimate printings of them. I have no idea what kanji to use though!
After class, I saw the cute guy from photography club and he waved at me!! :D
Then was my all time favorite class!
Sadou!!
We were back to practicing entering the room and using fans today.
The okashi was adorable today!
It was called "haru" something and represented the air in springtime. The brown is the ground and the pink and white is the air, because the air in springtime has all the pink sakura petals in it.
It was hard to pick up because it was all jiggly. I was first so I didn't realize how hard it would be and I accidentally separated the pink and brown parts and everyone laughed.
The texture was also really weird. The brown part was good because it was anko, but the pink and white part was all gelatin-like and tasted weird, haha.
Then we made the tea for each other and switched groups. While the second group did the tea ceremony, my group listened to sensei's lecture. After her lecture, we got to make tea for ourselves! She said we could use however much matcha and water we wanted. I put in two pretty big spoonfuls of matcha powder and my turned out to be delicious!!
(And I got my favorite cup too! The one with the face)
After class, Brendan (aka Kuma chan) and I left together so we could talk about the presentation we have to do on The Mourning Forest for Folklore. He stopped at the green area to pick up his bag that he had left with a bunch of the dorm kids. While I waited, one of the Japanese guys in the group asked my name and introduced himself. I found out he's studying law at Nanzan. He was really nice!
So I'd kind of wanted to start working on our presentation today and thought that was what we'd been doing. I'd watched it over a week ago, but had had to wait for Brendan to watch it, which he hadn't done until this past weekend!
But he wanted to each research it first, so I gave him the questions she'd given us to answer last class (that he'd missed) and we split them up.
Then I headed to the computer building to see if I could find and buy the wheel for my bike online. Well, I did find them, but they were all over $500!!! I also looked up cheap bike places and found some bike recycle stores in Nagoya, but the cheapest bike was $50 and anyway I had to get it to Ichinomiya somehow.
Exasperated, I looked down at the time and saw it was already 5:50!! Crap!
So I rushed home. Walking home took feaking forever, so I only got home around 7:20.
I'd been hungry during calligraphy and had figured I'd maybe get bread or something for the ride home, but since I hadn't gotten a chance to, I was starving now!! I was excited to just walk right in and start eating dinner right away.
But no one was home! Ahhh!! So I ran to my room and ate some snacks. Thankfully everyone, including Ken, came home about 10 minutes later and Yuko whipped up some spaghetti.
After dinner, I wrote the sakubun I had to do for homework and went to sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment