hanasuno, kakuno, and internet

I finally slept well last night, due to having bought a comforter the night before, so my day started off quite well. I didn't have class until 1:00 PM, which was nice.

Today's classes were "Speaking and Writing C" with this small and very polite Japanese woman. My main problems with the class is that she kind of just rambles about what we're supposed to do and then just leaves us to our devices. Admittedly, it might become a lot of nice speaking practice, which I look forward to. I have to send an e-mail to her for homework... so note to self: do it.

After that particular course was "Kanji C", which proved to be quite nice. The professor was very animated, and that which we didn't understand in Japanese, he acted out for us to better understand. However, it took us the entire period (that is, an hour and a half), to work our way through one worksheet. Class next week should be fairly enjoyable since we'll have actually done homework and studying by then (presumably). 40ish Kanji to go.

I got my student ID card after the class, which was an insanely large sigh of relief. After getting my password, I got to e-mail home again briefly about the situation, but now I can look forward to bringing in my laptop on Tuesday to the ISC to surf the web at will. I'm still looking into getting internet for the dorm, but at the moment, I may just pay Han and share with him a wireless router. It might be easier, considering the mess with the 携帯電話 concerning my age. Screw being "young".

Tonight has been decently fun though. Hanging out with the other 留学生 in the ping-pong room (there's no where else really that's communal with tables) is proving to be pretty fun. The president and the vice president of the 105 (the international student support group) were hanging out with Regina and Kirsty (who are students from last semester), and they came down to hang out with the rest of us for a bit.

I think, that at least in this short while, I've learned the most about other cultures that I know fairly peripherally. I've come to understand a lot more about French culture, as well as British and Australian culture, just from speaking often to the other 留学生. I think that I've also being fairly realistic about American culture, and it's fairly invigorating to the others about how frank my perspective on at least Californian lifestyle can turn out. What I've found very interesting is how often I have to define myself as アメリカ人 (American) as opposed to Vietnamese. Ethnicity doesn't matter so much, I guess, because nationality here is indicative of ethnicity. It's pretty interesting how the rest of the world looks out at the concept of race, as opposed to the American quandry where we worry about stepping on toes due to ethnicity.

Tomorrow is the city-walk around Minato Mirai (MM21). It should be pretty cool, and from what I hear, it's very metropolitan as opposed to the vicinity of YNU.