9/2/2010

This morning my host dad went to play golf with some friends from high school. He usually drives me to the station in the morning, so he apologized like a million times. Haha. Anywho, so my host mom took me to Shippo station, which is where Javier catches his train in the morning. I met Javier there, and we went to school together. Those trains are soooo much more crowded than my usual train, it was weird. It was rainy this morning, so my host mom told me not to ride my bike to school. I walked with Javier, we met Alex on our train, and Kodi while we were walking, so the four of us walked to school together. We were like JUST on time. I’m glad I have a bike to ride…
My first class today was Japanese history, I think I’m really going to like this class. Today we just did like a survey of what everyone knew already, and of course, when we were talking about ancient history, or like anything up to the showa period, I didn’t know much, but when we started talking about important figures in contemporary Japan, I somehow ended up telling the class about the DPJ, the LDP, Naoto Kan, Yukio Hatoyama, and Ichirou Ozawa. I hope I made some Japan bowlers proud, because I felt like a bit of a loser.
After history, I have English. We got all of our books today. Like all of the books we will read throughout the year (there are 10 of them) and I already owned 4 of them, I felt so wasteful… I’ve read 2 of them, and am currently reading a third…. I should have picked different books, I don’t want to re-read everything, I want to read new stuff…
After English, I have a free period while the Precalculus students are in class. This will be the time that I do my math homework. Our math teacher really really does not want us to do math at home, he says that every second we spend doing math homework is a second we’re not immersing ourselves in Japanese culture. More about this later.
After that free period is lunch. For lunch today, they brought us sandwiches from some nearby sandwich shop. Apparently some vegetarian sandwiches were ordered, but they were not there. I ended up having to go to the udon shop across the street with my English teacher. He said he would take me on the condition that I talk to my Japanese teacher about the previously mentioned textbook issue. Thankfully for me, my Japanese teacher had just come in, and called me out to discuss this with me. She told me that I could use a harder textbook during class while she teaches Genki to everyone else. Yaay! My English teacher told me that he “mentioned it to her in passing” and that’s why she knew about it.
After lunch I have calculus….. Class today wasn’t too bad, I didn’t think. Apparently everyone else was freaking out, because he like literally went through everything we will learn in the entire AB calculus course. The thing is, in my class there is a person who took AB calc last year (and got a 5 on the AP) there is one other person who has learned some calculus, and one more person who is good at math, and is taking BC. The other 3 of us are all not so great at math, and don’t know anything about calculus. So our math teacher has to try to teach all of us at once, which must be really crazy, so I wasn’t too freaked out. But he told us that we have to complete the first chapter of the book over the next few days. The first chapter is called “prerequisites for calculus” and it’s just a bunch of stuff that we should already know. More about this later.
Okay, so after math I have Japanese. At the beginning of class today, we were given a test, this test was supposed to give the teacher a better understanding of where everyone is in terms of Japanese knowledge, so basically it was another placement exam. While I was taking the test, she came around and told me to tell her when I finish. Also, I’m going to translate everything into English for the sake of the readers who don’t know Japanese, but just know that my Japanese teacher and I communicate solely in Japanese. So after I finished (and I was the first one to finish, which I didn’t realize until after I turned it in, because it was so loud…) my Japanese teacher came and brought me a textbook that is COMPLETELY in Japanese. There are no English instructions, no English translations of vocab words, nothing. I was so happy! She was asking me to do it, and she was like “muzukashii?” “is it hard?” (I know I said I would say it only in english, but this just makes more sense to me in Japanese) and I said yes, so she said “muzukashi sugiru?” “is it too hard?” and I said no. haha. I use my electronic dictionary to figure out what everything means, and then take notes on it. After everyone finished the test, we took a break, but I kept studying, because I was having a lot of fun with it, but she came by and said “annie, please take a break” so I did, but I just sat there waiting until I could study some more. After that she started teaching the body parts, not like the vocab, but the kanji for the body parts. I started participating, we had to write out the kanji for the body parts, so I was writing them out, and my teacher came around and said “this is too easy for you” and she asked me to go back to my other textbook. 本当にうれしいよ！(I am really happy)
After that, school was over, but Javier and I decided to stay after school to study calculus a little. We were working on the “prerequisites to calculus” for like an hour, and only got about 6 pages in. So of course, as Annies always do, I freaked out a bit. I don’t remember like any math, at all. It’s really sad, and I was trying to re-learn it, but it was taking sooo long. So Javier and I went to go ask the math teacher if we could take our textbooks home (as I mentioned before, we’re only supposed to do math at school), so he gave us this whole speech about how he really doesn’t think it’s a good idea, and how we shouldn’t worry if we aren’t very good at it, because he is going to tailor his teaching specifically to each student. And I think that’s really great, but I don’t think that that will help much if I can’t even do things I learned in like Algebra I. Also, I’m really scared of talking to adults, and I was really stressed out. My advisor is the math teacher’s wife, and she came in with him, and was there for support, I guess. I was trying really hard not to freak out in front of anyone, but I guess I didn’t hide it well, because my advisor decided a hug was necessary, during which, I started crying. I still feel really really bad about this, and am considering deleting that story from this blog even now. It’s not exactly something I want everyone to know… but I don’t have time to talk to people individually, so this is sort of an all or nothing sort of deal. Anyway, so this now became a long and awkward conversation, during which I was scared to say anything, because I didn’t want to start crying more. It was all very embarrassing. Javier and Michael were still in the room by the way. They must have felt super awkward… Ugh, that was not fun.
So after that, Javier and I speed walked to the station, and caught an express train to Osato, where my host dad picked us both up, and drove Javier home. When I got home, I immediately started on my English homework, and worked on it until dinner. For dinner tonight we had vegetable tempura (omg, soooo freaking delicious!), some really good tofu, rice, and miso soup. It was entirely too much food! After that I went up to my room to finish my English homework, and start doing some Japanese study (although technically there was no homework). Later, my host mom brought some watermelon up to me for dessert. Watermelon here is soooo much more delicious than watermelon in the U.S. btw. All fruits are more delicious here!