OH!

It was my first day of school!

I woke up at 7am after a pretty restless sleep starting at 2am. I met Greg and Natalie in the kitchen around 720 for breakfast, and then Natalie and I began waiting at the door around 745. Greg didn't make it down until a few minutes before 8 because of some miskept time, but that was not to stop us! We headed to the station, some of us excited/anxious for our first day, other not so excited. Our first train was pretty packed, though we were surprised at the number of people who actually got off at our stop...who ever knew Nishi-kawaguchi was such a hip spot? It was probably so packed though because the Keihin-Tohoku line is the only one from Akabane that goes out to this area. Our other trains weren't too bad...I guess...I just force myself to not think about all the people on the train and the lack of air (well luckily on one, I was under an air vent and there was actually air coming through) and then I don't feel so claustrophobic. I just kept repeating "I'm thankful no one has bad body odor right now..." Which might not be the case in the summer. However, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

So we got to school early and headed to the classroom, Greg to his, and Natalie and I to check what section of level 3 we'd be in. We, and 2 other UVA-ers are in this section together. It seemed a lot like the 'old' students (those who have been here for a semester already) were in a section together, and they lumped the new ones together, with some exceptions.

Class began with Kobayashi-sensei who seems really nice, funny, and cool. He went over the details of everything - our schedule, grammar sheet, books, vocab lists, homework, etc. The whole time I was pretty excited just because I was thinking, how cool is this that I'm taking a class in another language...AND I understand it? (I mean, the Japanese teachers at UVA usually do conduct class solely in Japanese, but it still felt really different. And small things like on our grammar sheet, the grammar points are explained in Japanese, rather than in English like I'm more used to, and no English translations of example sentences and whatno.) His Japanese was especially easy to understand I think, which is another reason why he made such a good impression on me. Intensive takes up two periods, and we switch teachers and lessons for the 2nd period. We do grammar everyday for a period, and then we alternate Kanji and Oral/Writing for the 2nd period. I've yet to see it truly in action, obviously, but I'm sure it'll make the class go by somewhat more quickly since it's not just one huge 3-hr long block of all these Japanese lessons crammed in.

So after 1st period (marked by a bell!) there was a 15-minute break where Greg and Daniel dropped by, and then 2nd period started with Noguchi-sensei, who I have heard is really cool, but we really didn't interact with him that much to get a good feel for him. He was funny during orientation, but he basically just had students read each part of the syllabus and whatnot. Then he said, "Now we have a test!" And everyone starts laughing, "Ha Ha HA! That's so funny!" And then he said, "It's not a joke." And then we said, "Ha ha..." but not quite so heartily. So we really did take a test for an hour. It was deemed as a placement test, but I heard later that it doesn't actually count for anything and it might be a guide for next semester's actual placement test. Thank goodness, because that test was quite hard.

After that fun period, a bunch of us met up and we killed some time before heading to a cafeteria (apparently everyone heads there right after 2nd period, so it's extremely crowded then, but clears up a bit later) by buying our textbooks and walking around (slowly). I got the salt ramen again and ate with a bunch of Daniel's friends, most of whom are also in level 3 (but most are in the other section). Natalie and I sat with them for a long time, and most of them left too, and we got ice cream yummm. We had all this free time because we weren't planning to go to any other classes, so the only thing we had left to do was check out a dance club practice that wasn't until 3:30pm. So then Daniel took us outside, where I guess there really isn't much to just 'check out' since the school's so small and every building's pretty self-explanatory. But he took us up to this hill across the road and we sat on this tree trunk bench overlooking the sports fields, which I actually hadn't seen before. Natalie and I took a look at our new textbooks - exciting! - and pondered about the Modern Dancers group we were about to check out. Greg finally caught up with us too...as we were leaving. So I think he sat on the bench and played Pokemon.

[Note: Natalie did a killer recap of our experience with the dance club.] We ended up having a good time, which surprised me because I'm always somewhat nervous about going to new things, and we really had no idea what was in store for us. But we were able to do a lot more than we thought we would be doing (as in we danced with them) and joked around a lot. It was really cool how they moved together as one, not just when dancing, but warming up and stretching. They do everything in such a routine that it's ingrained in their minds and bodies so much that they just...do it...all together. I kept finding myself comparing it to dance groups I've been a part of. It was neat that they did stretching so similarly to my old Chinese folk dance troupe (though I guess...how many different ways could you actually stretch?). But they did everything so...robot-like in a way, and so seriously. Which is good when what you're really trying to get something done and you're looking for some serious discipline, training, and dancing. But what I like about, say, Mahogany Dance Troupe at UVA, is how much fun we have even just stretching. People are singing along to the music or just breaking into random dancing with others, and people are chatting and laughing and joking around the whole time, but still getting warmed up and stretched out. So I missed that atmosphere, though when they started teaching us some of their choreography, I think they were a bit more open, or that may have just been Natalie and my loud laughing... What also was different is that in Mahogany, we have a whole board of the executive members, whereas it seemed like only one girl was leading everything, with another one who helped out with watching and correcting the others. So in Mahogany, all of us will make announcements, and then we divide up things between us like warm-ups, stretching, teaching. Obviously they are very different groups, but it's always interesting to do some observing and comparing. I, and Natalie and Hunter, are excited to attend G-Splash's practices/auditions starting next week. They were practicing in the same room (the school doesn't have as many nice facilities as UVA does for things like dance practices) and I still found myself more drawn to their music and moves. We'll just have to see how things go, because Natalie and I agreed that the Sophia Modern Dancers seemed really nice and it seems more of a come-when-you-can type of group, as opposed to others that may be more strict about attendance and commitment.

Afterwards, it seemed most people were doing their own thing, since we all have different schedules now, so after getting in touch with some, Natalie and I decided to head back to DK; we were pretty tired after all. We ran into Hunter at the platform and discussed our days and all that. We made it back and decided on Mos Burger for dinner, with Jeannette as well. I had the Teriyaki burger, as my friend Ben advised me to go for it in honor of him about 5 minutes before I left, and it wasn't amazing but I suppose it did the job. We had a fun time just hanging out though, but we all seemed pretty worn out from our first day of school.