Japanese

Today, our school had a visit from 47 Japanese students. Apparently, they’re here for a week. From what I understand, it’s kind of like what St Pete’s does with the school in France. They come here in the fall and then in February, our school sends students to Japan for a week. They were only at our school for the day though, and I had to go to the welcoming ceremony with Julie (from France) and Imme (from Holland). They definitely got more presents and a cooler welcome than we got! And they’re only here for the week! I hope it’s just because the presents are in a higher concentration because they’re here for a way shorter time than we are.

Anyway, then we had to go to an English class taught by Jasper with 20 of the Japanese students. They made me feel a little better about my Chinese, because all they knew was ni hao (hello) and xie xie (thank you). But, like the Taiwanese, they wanted to take pictures with us. They were really nice though!

The gum here comes in bags. It’s kind of weird. And it also disintegrates really quickly in my mouth. I was talking to some other exchange students about that, and it’s only me that happens to. I must have acid spit. Watch out. Don’t make me mad.

I didn’t spend very much time in class today with all the Japanese stuff going on. But I did learn to play the ocarina in Music class! That was fun! It’s kind of like how in Canada, we learn to play the recorder and here it’s the ocarina. I got my own plastic one. It’s red. I hope I get to keep it, they didn’t make me pay for it. I thought I was doing okay, but everyone else learned the different notes really quickly and the teacher taught so fast! There will be owl sounds coming from my room this week. I’ve seen kids walking around the school with their ocarinas around their necks. They come with a string through them for that specific purpose. Bling takes a new meaning over here.

In culture class on Wednesday, we learned how to make a ‘dough figure.’ We made elephant stickits. Well, apparently just elephants, but they were actually stickits. Mine is a wrinkly fat guy. He doesn’t have a name yet, I’m waiting for just the right one. Like Todd or something. Suggestions welcome. I’ll post some pictures on facebook because I'm not sure how/if I can do that here.