Moments Today

Outside of the mandolin club room, there is a pool of wet yellow house paint.  Nanako and I clean it up with old sheet music.  My instincts are making it hard to resist turning this into a body-painting party.  But as soon as it is cleaned up, we go to wash our hands.  It doesn't come off.  Makonee and Megumi join the hand-washing quest-- they tried to clean up a little more after we left.  We end up going to the nurse's office.  [So different from what I would normally do!]  [Also, it's my first time going to the health room... there are 2 girls snuggling in bed and 2 reading a magazine on the floor.  It seems like a place to just relax.]  When we still can't get clean with the nurse's soap, we end up going outside to the maintenance people and getting it off with paint remover.  Nanako cleans my hands for me, and the others say she's like my mother.  She kind of is, in the mandolin world. An hour later, our hands are pink from the scrubbing and the cold [and the chemicals?], and we finally can return to our instruments.

Suzuka and I get very excited when we discover that Jingle Bells exists in both languages.

Walking home, I show Cassiopeia to Megumi.  I successfully explain that it is a swan without knowing the word for swan.  We look for Orion and can't find it.

It's a good thing I went with culture instead of instincts in the paint situation, because it turns out that what I thought was a casual dinner with my first host family is actually a 7 course French meal at a resort in the mountains with various priests, professional temple builders from Kyoto, and an opera singer.  I discover that though I may be able to explain a swan, I cannot explain the difference between a priest and a monk.




Ok so done being all poetical and stuff like that.  :]
other good moment, though not today:
I was going to a Rotary meeting last Monday, and a Rotarian was driving me there.  His two little sons were in the back seat.  For the drive there, they were very very shy.  They would scream and hide their faces if I just looked in their direction.  On the way back, the 8 year old was very curious about me.  He asked me lots of questions.  The one thing that really freaked him out was that I spoke English.  I hadn't spoken any English in front of him ever, yet he still got really anxious, saying "I completely don't speak American!!  I don't even understand AT ALL!  Don't let her speak American!  I only speak Japanese!  I just DON"T UNDERSTAND!"  It was actually really cute.

Also, in my last post I forgot to mention that I went to Tokyo, which was definitely contributing to my happiness.  It was soooo completely different.  Like a different culture.  But not.  But still, so different.  I'll need to live in a Japanese city sometime if I really want to know Japan I think.  Anyway, I went with Annika, the other exchange student in the district [she's German and very awesome] and the four outbounds.  We spent the first day going to different parts of Tokyo.. Akihabara, Ginza, etc, and the 2nd day at Disneyland!  Funfunfun.

Once again, I know I have about 10 million things I'm forgetting.  Gotta blog more often!!!