6/07/2013

First Day of School

Daybreak

On Tuesday, I woke up around 5:00. Kilo and Jackson were still asleep, so I silently slid the door open and brought my laptop into the kitchen. In the morning, I tend to get distracted really easily. I did some writing for this blog, but after maybe 5 minutes I got up and started washing dishes. There are actually quite a few utensils, cups, bowls, pans, pots, and other kitchen tools, but they are all really old and beat up, and most of them were dirty. After I had cleaned a solid amount of them, I decided to try and figure out the rice cooker.

There were no instructions on the rice cooker, so I used the instructions on the bag of rice. There are no measuring cups, so I used a drinking glass which looks to be about 2 cups.


I ate a banana, and then tried out the natto. It was disgusting. Luckily the rice was coming soon. We were just experimenting with the time, so we were checking it every 30 minutes or so.

At this point, Kilo had awakened, and Jackson had, too, to some degree. Kilo and I decided to go on a walk around the neighborhood.






We walked down the streets and took quite a few pictures. One of my goals was to gauge how far the supermarket is from the wakoryo.


A post office.
After only about 10 minutes of leisurely walking, we arrived at the intersection, across from the supermarket. The program leaders really seem to exaggerate walking distances, because they had heavily implied that we wouldn't want to walk here. The school is probably farther, and we have to walk there every day.

On the way back up the hill, there were lots of elementary school kids on their way to school. There was a group of girls walking beside us for a while. They kept on daring each other to say hello to the scary gaijin. Occasionally we'd hear a little half-hearted "ha-ro" from the group. I'd say "Hello" back, and they'd all giggle and fall behind for a second or two.

We got back, ate some rice (it was still too moist, but we were short on time), and right as we were finishing up our makeshift breakfast, the woman escorting us to school for the first day showed up.






Class Begins

The walk to school isn't bad at all. It only takes about 10-15 minutes to get to class from the wakoryo.



A really cool garden off the path inside the school gates.
A student named Takayuki met us while we were en route to be given a tour of the school. He seems like a pretty cool guy, and his English is great, especially his intonation.

This building is called "i-talk". It's a place where
Japanese English-learners can come to try and speak
English. I'll be spending a lot of time here.



We soon made it to our classrooms. We split up into 2 groups, A and B, and joined our respective classes. I am in A group.

We actually had a normal class right then and there. We got our textbooks and started right into them. I was expecting more of a plain introduction, but I'm not complaining.
The view from the hallway outside the classroom.

These are the ticket vending machines in the
dining hall. The tickets are good for meals
in the actual dining area.

Kangei-Kai

After class, we toured a couple more places, like the on-campus convenience store and the cafeteria nearby, where they have an ice and water dispensing machine.

The cafeteria.
We soon returned to i-talk, where there was a welcome party for all of the new study abroad students. Since we had decided the night before to make me the male leader and Courtney the female leader, we both had to make a little speech. In Japanese. It was kind of scary, but I think I held my own.
The gymnasium.
Student council room.
There were a bunch of signatures pasted on the
student council room's window. Kinda cool.

After that we did a little more touring. We went see the gym, and later we were going to go see the library and more.


...But I'm gonna leave it at that for now. That was the first half of my Tuesday. I'll post more when I get some more time. Later!

1 comment:

  1. The house with the trees out front (I think it's picture 8?) looks really pretty. Are the signatures done by exchange students?

    ReplyDelete