Placement exams are BAD.
Oct. 10th, 2002 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
melredcapOkay, okay, it's been a bit longer than I intended since I updated last. Sorry! I really did plan to update sooner... but I've been INCREDIBLY busy. I actually think I'm going to have more free time after classes start!
Kanazawa University seem to feel that foreign exchange students need at least one orientation meeting a day. Each of these meetings contains enough new information to make it essential for us to go, plus enough stuff we already know to pad it out to a few hours. (And bowing. We bow a lot here.) They're usually interesting, but... I spent three hours today, in the second meeting of the day, thinking things like "They told us that this morning... they told us THAT last week... okay, that's new, but it's in the pamphlet they just gave us... they told us that yesterday..."
And then there was the placement exam. The less said about that, the better. I did okay... but by the end of it, I felt like my brain had turned into jelly and was oozing out my ears. It was HARD!
Don't get the idea I'm not enjoying myself, though! When I'm not in orientation meetings, I've been doing things like going into town (by myself, on the bus - Japanese buses are interesting!) to find department stores, the local offices where I need to get my alien registration card, Kenrokuen Park (supposed to be one of the three most beautiful parks in Japan - I haven't gone in yet, but I know where to get off the bus now, and I'm planning to go this weekend) and so on. Many unsuspecting Japanese people have been accosted in the street or in shops by a tall gaijin girl and asked for directions and advice, and everyone's been very friendly and helpful. I went to a bookshop with Marie-Claire, a French girl who's also an exchange student here, and a couple of teenage boys had a great time trying to remember enough English to explain things without resorting to Japanese. They said they were 'ronin', which used to mean 'masterless samurai' but now means someone who's graduated from high school but hasn't managed to pass the entrance exams for university yet; they're studying to take them again. We wished them luck, which started up another round of everyone bowing to each other and saying things like 'arigatou gozaimasu' (thank you) 'gambatte kudasai' (Please try hard) 'zehi ganbarimasu' (I'll definitely do my best) and so on.
*heh* I get stared at a lot in the street, too. Adults are discreet about it, looking away every time I turn in their direction, but some of the kids are very obvious! I don't really mind - I was kind of expecting it, since I knew I was going to stand out. After all, I'm nearly six feet tall and am very obviously NOT Japanese; quite a few Japanese men are as tall as me, or taller, but none of the women I've met so far come close. This caused a bit of a problem when I wanted to buy some new clothes! I wanted to buy a skirt or some nice pants, to wear to the opening ceremony for the exchange program, but none of the skirts fitted, and the only pair of nice black pants I found that fitted my waist were about ten centimetres too short. I could have found jeans to fit me, but that wasn't what I was after... ah well. I'm never going to have trouble seeing over other people's heads in a crowd, unless it's made up of other ryuugakusei (exchange students), at least.
Kanazawa is *beautiful*. I know, I said that before, but it bears repeating a few times. Kanazawa University is a short way outside of the city, and the fifteen-minute walk in to town to go to the nearest department store is nice and peaceful; it goes along a little valley, with trees and vines covering the hills. (LOTS of vines; the things have taken over some hills, draped all over the trees and joining them together. Maybe it's kudzu?) There are lots of little wildflowers beside the road: tiny blue ones, yellow and white ones that look like daisies but grow on vines, pink things that look like someone dyed grass seed heads, bigger purple flowers that look a little like foxglove flowers (also on vines)... there are tiny yellow butterflies, bigger ones with lacy-edged brown and gold wings, dragonflies, HUGE moths at night (the size of my hand! No wonder the Japanese film industry came up with Mothra!)... flocks of little birds that sit in trees and bob up and down like they're bowing... and there are hawks here too, circling above it all. (Mum, you'd love them! Remember the hawk at home?)
Ahhhhh, I love it here. I feel a bit homesick sometimes, missing people, but that's my only problem; if they were just here, I wouldn't miss Canberra at all, I think. Well... not for a while, anyway!
Well, classes start tomorrow, so I'd better be good and finish up, ne? I'll add more later. (Ha! I get to go to my first Budo class tomorrow, too! I am SO looking forward to that!)
Ja, mata ne! (Later!)
Kanazawa University seem to feel that foreign exchange students need at least one orientation meeting a day. Each of these meetings contains enough new information to make it essential for us to go, plus enough stuff we already know to pad it out to a few hours. (And bowing. We bow a lot here.) They're usually interesting, but... I spent three hours today, in the second meeting of the day, thinking things like "They told us that this morning... they told us THAT last week... okay, that's new, but it's in the pamphlet they just gave us... they told us that yesterday..."
And then there was the placement exam. The less said about that, the better. I did okay... but by the end of it, I felt like my brain had turned into jelly and was oozing out my ears. It was HARD!
Don't get the idea I'm not enjoying myself, though! When I'm not in orientation meetings, I've been doing things like going into town (by myself, on the bus - Japanese buses are interesting!) to find department stores, the local offices where I need to get my alien registration card, Kenrokuen Park (supposed to be one of the three most beautiful parks in Japan - I haven't gone in yet, but I know where to get off the bus now, and I'm planning to go this weekend) and so on. Many unsuspecting Japanese people have been accosted in the street or in shops by a tall gaijin girl and asked for directions and advice, and everyone's been very friendly and helpful. I went to a bookshop with Marie-Claire, a French girl who's also an exchange student here, and a couple of teenage boys had a great time trying to remember enough English to explain things without resorting to Japanese. They said they were 'ronin', which used to mean 'masterless samurai' but now means someone who's graduated from high school but hasn't managed to pass the entrance exams for university yet; they're studying to take them again. We wished them luck, which started up another round of everyone bowing to each other and saying things like 'arigatou gozaimasu' (thank you) 'gambatte kudasai' (Please try hard) 'zehi ganbarimasu' (I'll definitely do my best) and so on.
*heh* I get stared at a lot in the street, too. Adults are discreet about it, looking away every time I turn in their direction, but some of the kids are very obvious! I don't really mind - I was kind of expecting it, since I knew I was going to stand out. After all, I'm nearly six feet tall and am very obviously NOT Japanese; quite a few Japanese men are as tall as me, or taller, but none of the women I've met so far come close. This caused a bit of a problem when I wanted to buy some new clothes! I wanted to buy a skirt or some nice pants, to wear to the opening ceremony for the exchange program, but none of the skirts fitted, and the only pair of nice black pants I found that fitted my waist were about ten centimetres too short. I could have found jeans to fit me, but that wasn't what I was after... ah well. I'm never going to have trouble seeing over other people's heads in a crowd, unless it's made up of other ryuugakusei (exchange students), at least.
Kanazawa is *beautiful*. I know, I said that before, but it bears repeating a few times. Kanazawa University is a short way outside of the city, and the fifteen-minute walk in to town to go to the nearest department store is nice and peaceful; it goes along a little valley, with trees and vines covering the hills. (LOTS of vines; the things have taken over some hills, draped all over the trees and joining them together. Maybe it's kudzu?) There are lots of little wildflowers beside the road: tiny blue ones, yellow and white ones that look like daisies but grow on vines, pink things that look like someone dyed grass seed heads, bigger purple flowers that look a little like foxglove flowers (also on vines)... there are tiny yellow butterflies, bigger ones with lacy-edged brown and gold wings, dragonflies, HUGE moths at night (the size of my hand! No wonder the Japanese film industry came up with Mothra!)... flocks of little birds that sit in trees and bob up and down like they're bowing... and there are hawks here too, circling above it all. (Mum, you'd love them! Remember the hawk at home?)
Ahhhhh, I love it here. I feel a bit homesick sometimes, missing people, but that's my only problem; if they were just here, I wouldn't miss Canberra at all, I think. Well... not for a while, anyway!
Well, classes start tomorrow, so I'd better be good and finish up, ne? I'll add more later. (Ha! I get to go to my first Budo class tomorrow, too! I am SO looking forward to that!)
Ja, mata ne! (Later!)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-10-10 09:00 am (UTC)getting settled
take care of yourself, we will all be thinking of you!
~Moon Fox Kay
Hawks
Lovely descriptive phrasing - and yes, sweetheart, I'd love to see them. But I will in May won't I?
Mum xxxoooxxx