Interesting Interactions

My very first interactions with Japanese high school students are often strange.

Today:

• One girl asked me if I like pumpkins.  It was one of those situations where she kept looking at me and talking to her friends and giggling, so I know she had been planning/ working up her courage for a while.  She didn't say anything after I responded, she just ran away giggling...
• Another girl hand-fed me purple gum.  No conversation, just gum.  She seemed to be friends with my friends.
• Someone else said hello and shook my hand very seriously, but never actually talked to me or told me her name or anything.  Usually people run up to me and giggle and tell me their names and say "kawaiiiiiiii!" and then run away... this time it was quite the opposite.

Other days

• The first conversation I had with my friends was about whether I knew about "Vomit Tetris."  I still don't know what they were talking about.
• Actually that was my second conversation.  I just remembered that my first one was them asking me to go to the bathroom with them.  I was confused and couldn't understand them very well, so we didn't end up going...
• First conversation with other friends was right after a school assembly where the principal spoke.  They explained to me that the principal looked just like Dumbledore.  He's a short, muscular/stout Japanese man with no facial hair that wears collared shirts.  I guess everyone just loves Harry Potter a lot.  
• Now I'm forgetting all of them :(  

Anyway, I can't think of anymore right now and it is maybe not as interesting as I thought at first.  Short update:

Things are going well here!  I feel like I redeemed myself after looking like a complete fool in swimming by being good at running [we finally switched our PE activity!].  Of course, I do have the advantage of being several inches taller than most of them.  But I still feel like less of an idiot.

I've started riding my bike to and from school.  It is very nice.  Ever since freshmen year, when Molly started driving me to school, I have felt guilty having people drive me around. [except Molly] I enjoy being outside for a while and exercising a little.  People don't go outside a whole lot here, or at least in my family.  

I understood a tiny bit of a non-science/math class!!!!  It was World History, and the topic was the Trojan War.  I understood the part about everyone wanting the golden apple.  

Beans are mostly eaten as dessert here.

I'm going to a French restaurant with 6 Buddhist priests for dinner today.  

There was a typhoon yesterday, but it's sunny today.  It's finally not way too hot.  Hooray!

I guess that's all for now... Sorry everything I write is disorganized.  In the future, I might try to be more focused, or more thoughtful, instead of just dashing my thoughts down and not looking back on it.  I might just keep doing it this way though.  We'll see.