Yoooo

TGIS! That’s my new slogan, since I’ve just come home from school on a Saturday, again! Well, I had an interesting week of sorts. My class took off to the land of Oz this week, leaving me in lovely Kansas, a.k.a. the freshmen class. Quite a different bunch than I am used to. The freshmen are very vocal and there are a few girls that should be professional clowns with all the makeup they wear. Class wasn’t too thrilling since nothing was relevant to me. However, I got a kick out of the English Grammar teacher. He’s a very large man with a posh voice, he should be British. (he did however wear a different pen around his neck everyday) Anyway, his English was by far the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. He was explaining the sentence, ‘I hope I will be able to speak English better.’ But what I heard was, ‘Aye hopu aye wiru be aburu to speaku eengurishu behtah.’ We’ll leave that at that ;-P Today all the freshmen had special classes to attend. The other exchange student and I had a sado (tea ceremony) class. We went down to our school’s little tea room that is all decked out with tatami mats, sliding screens, and the altar were an inspiring work of calligraphy is placed. Well, I tell you not much is inspiring when you sit for three hours in the seiza style. It’s like amputating your legs without any surgery involved! You could just look around the room and see all the students trying different ways to alleviate the pain. We didn’t actually end up doing a ceremony, just learning the basics. I felt like the native watching the other kids try and follow the directions. But I’m guessing maybe the seiza had the same effect on their brains as it did on their legs (yeah). Well, once the day was over I was out of there. No more frosh classes for me! But as I was leaving with the other exchange student this little dude came up to us. He was from the class across the hall. He had seen one of us foreigners in the cheerleading bit during the culture festival and was determined to be taught the different routines. (NO, it was not me who was a cheerleader!) Anyway, his friend told me he knows dances to stuff from Bring it On and Japanese TV shows and stuff. A little creepy. Anyway I really did get out of there after that. And I’m home now watching old dudes on TV in red thongs perform a ceremonial dance. And someone thought it would be cute to dress the reporter up in the red thong too…