This is going to be a little longer than my usual posts, but damnit I got some hits, and I’m going to tell you all about them.
Ok, For starters, jet lag is killing me, litterally standing on one of my feet so I cannot escape and just pummeling me repeatedly with its fists laced with malicious sleeping poison.
With all this, I can STILL notice effects of A314.
3xA314(2 from ear to jaw to ear, and one under the nose)
Today was the first class. Last year, class kicked my ass on a daily basis for the first few weeks as I was in between the skill levels and just chose to challange myself in the name of bettering my language skills(It worked). Im sort of a language nerd deep down I guess
. (I like to tell myself that its to help me woo ladies of other nationalities
, but thats a long way off at the moment)
This year, I have the skill level I need for the class, but I’m a little rusty, and I need a few days to refresh myself. Today could be defined as:
“The center of everyone’s attention.”
Like I said, I was absolutely exhausted, so dealing with this attention was a little difficult. It came from all sides. My teachers seemed to be picking on me. My classmates seemed to be rallying behind me. My jokes, sideways comments, and body language were all scrutenized.
However, this makes it all seem like it was negative. It wasn’t, in fact, very little of it was. The only negative part was that I was barely able to handle it.
The teacher continued to call my name in class in situations I really didn’t want to here my name in. I hate looking like an idiot if I don’t know the answer, and I hate it more if I have to stand in front of the whole room to show them I don’t know what I’m doing/was too tired to maintain my focus. I guess you could look at this as a good thing, as it forced me to pay attention, and allowed me to absorb more material. Thankfully, I have a large drive to be good at this, and I was able via entering this very strange state of tense alertness which I have never seen come over me(Im as calm and cool as anyone you’ve ever met). I never get motivated like this in College. I graduated last spring(finished in 4 years, econ major, Chinese minor, did just fine), and maybe its a function of finally taking the classes that I wanted to take, but something was different.
The class is split into two parts, and we have a different teacher for each part, and the second teacher was doing the exact same thing. Thankfully I had pulled myself together somewhat and it was starting to look like a come-from-behind victory with her. That by the way was great, I was litterally silently pumping my fists at correct answers I was getting to this listening comprehention quiz we had. The the 3 japanese girls thought it was hysterical.
There were 3 Japanese girls who sat near me, 1 next to me(the cutest of the 3, about a 6.5(cute) in my eyes) and the other 2 directly behind me. There were plenty of open seats, but they chose those, I have no idea if thats a hit, but it certainly doesn’t end there. Just like the day before, just about anything I said caused the 3 to laugh, and if I added some sort of facial expression or body language, I could have them all doing thatscreaming/giggle like the stereotypical japanese school girls you are all imagining.
I was in a spotlight to them it seemed. The best example I can think of this is the following:
I’m not one of those people who can just sit still, I look around alot, continually looking for sources of sounds or other interesting stimulii(I’ve got ADD, I know, no suprise) However, if there is nothing going on, I tend to find my self scanning the faces of people in the room, seeing if I can somehow see into their brains and figure them out, or see something interesting there or something like that. These aren’t blatant stares, just my eyes darting around the room from one to on the next. Now, only one of the 3 girls I mentioned spoke english with any sort of fluency. During breaks, the three of them would engage in conversations completly in Japanese, getting to know one another, as they had only just met for the first time in this class. Every time I would look at them, the fluent english speaker seemed to feel compelled to tell me the gist of their conversation while the other two would stop talking so I could hear clearly. It was “oh we are talking about japanese characters” or “oh we are talking about her boat trip over from Japan” like I somehow silently DEMANDED that she tell me these things. I didn’t care, nor did I really want to hear about it, but it was an interesting rxn.
Also, the same girl must have told me just how great she thought my spoken chinese was about 3-4 times or so even though I was certainly not the best in the room by far. Not even the best out of the 3 of them. I never brought it up to my knowledge.
Also the fluent girl told me to complement the girl sitting next to me on her performance in front of the class in the way that you nudge the hopelessly shy guy to talk to the cute girl. Im not hopelessly shy, nor anything really like it, and I had already high-fived her, so I was a little confused by this.
At the end of class the cute one also asked for both my english name and chinese name, and had me write them down in her notebook. When I asked what she was doing for lunch, she told me she was meeting a friend, but she would see me tomorrow in class and gave me a big smile and that short armed twichy wave thing Asian born girls tend to do.
I left class in sort of a weary daze part because of the strange way everyone had treated me, part because this class is doable but difficult, and part because I could have fallen asleep standing up in the middle of a warzone.
After a quick muslim noodle lunch I went back to my room and passed out almost immediately.
What a way to start the day.
o