Beckteria

Speech

Yep, I gave my speech today in front of the entire student body today. It was probably only 2 minutes or so, but it was pretty tough. The principal introduced me and said some stuff that I ended up saying in my speech. You know, that I`m from the U.S. and grew up in Montana. So, I just basically repeated it. It`s not as though I could really improvise in that type of situation. I had a really bad American accent, but the teachers said that I did a good job. Don`t they have to say that?

The kids were all sitting on the gym floor (no bleachers). I thought that they were just sitting randomly about until I got on stage to do my speech. I then realized that they were in rows. They arranged themselves that way. Wierd. Also, at my school, it`s not mandatory to wear a uniform. This is very unusal in Japan. But, 99% of the students were a uniform anyway. I guess that most of them are upper middle class too, so you would think that they would want to wear street clothes. Well, I guess that`s why I really don`t have to dress up too much either. Although, I did wear a suit today for the speech.

*************************************************************************************

Yesterday, I went to Suma beach for a party. The drinks were half off for gaijin, so we took advantage of this. I only had 2 chu-hi`s because it was Sunday and I had what seemed like a blowout JET weekend.

Saturday evening I ran into some of the same people that I ran into at Pure. I couldn`t take going clubbing another night in a row like some of them wanted to do. Instead, we just hung out. Everyone else got a flashing drink (ice cube flashes different colors) and we hung out by the river and watched the ferris wheel with neon lights. Pretty chill. Took the last train home. (Perhaps you`re noticing a theme.)

So, Sunday, I really couldn`t go wild. My body is screaming at me. I think some other people feel the same way. Suma was therefore mostly us sitting on the beach people watching. The Japanese people seemed really wierd. A lot of the men had bleached (sort of) blonde hair that looked like they came from an old Poison album cover. Just hideous. A lot of them were really dark, as though they had gone to a tanning booth or slathered the fake tan on thick.

The gaijin that we didn`t know were also wierd. I think it`s because when you`re a gaijin, you can do almost whatever the fuck you want and nobody`s going to say anything. Needless to say, the people watching was riveting.

I really did contemplate just sleeping in my hammock all day Sunday, but I thought I should go to the beach because who knows when my next chance will be.

posted by Bex @ 2:14 AM