2012年6月21日木曜日

From Tornado Alley to Typhoon Alley

I have finally started my Japanese lessons. My tutor is an amazing military wife who has the patience of a saint. J We began with simple phrases that are commonly used in daily conversation the first day.  She has based her lessons on the communicative theory- where daily immersion into the culture along with application of language will build my vocabulary.  So far this has been great. I have been able to order in restaurants, shop and interact with native okinawans with minimal confusion.  Each lesson we work on grammar, culture, current Japanese events, food and arts & crafts. The second lesson we worked on creating sentences with the word “desu”. Which means “is”, for example, “ Kore wa watashi-no shujin dess.” Means this is my husband. We have also worked on pronunciation and phrasing of words, whew! It sounds like a lot but it is relatively easy since she is such a patient person. Every lesson she also brings a type of food for me to try. This week it was nata de coco (?). A flan or jello like coconut milk snack with lichee fruit in it. It was very good and her 1 year old daughter was more than happy to share it with me. Our first art project was origami, my former students would have been proud that I remembered some of it. We also read a baby book, this sounds funny but it was to illustrate how in Japanese everything has a word for a sound, from water dripping to snow falling. I’m fascinated with everything that I’m learning and loving the culture more and more with each experience.
Last weekend G and I had a daytime date at American Village. We went to a Thai restaurant where I was able to apply my “homework phrases”. I was very proud of myself when we got everything we wanted and I even got complimented on my pronunciation. Later that evening we went to a party with the international research student crew from 2 weeks ago. The Argentineans were giving tango lessons and cooking empanadas. The Brit who is visiting kept saying, “I don’t know what this is but it looks like a pasty, so that’s what I’m going to call it”. HAHA. I told her she can come over and I will make her pasty’s. Later in the evening another gent from England and the conversation wandered into American slang and British slang, before G and I knew it we were having a lesson in cockney slang. I felt like I was in a Guy Richie movie. But, I now know that the term “raspberries” came from cockney slang. It started with raspberry tart, which rhymes with fart which is why when we make the pthhh sound we call it giving raspberries.
On Sunday the typhoon warning was upgraded so we had to move all of the plants inside, thank goodness for a second bathroom- G now sings “Welcome to the Jungle” whenever he walks past it. Even though it was a pain I am grateful that we did move it all inside the winds whipped harder than I have ever heard in Oklahoma. While waiting for the storm to arrive we decided it still wasn’t too bad so we went to a yakiniku restaurant where you order the different types of meats and vegetables and then cook it at your table. Delicious! The best part is that I didn’t have any dishes afterwards. J The winds and rain finally hit here around 10 pm. All of our dehumidifiers were glugging trying to keep up, so we just snuggled down and watched in amazement how the winds whipped the rain and trees with such power.
Tuesday it was still raining quite a bit and G even had to pull a stranded motorist out of a huge puddle on the way home. The road had flooded so much that it was over his knees and soaked the floorboard of the Pajero. (It smells so great now-YUCK!) By the time we left on Wednesday for base all of the flooding had disappeared.
Wednesday morning I finally signed up for the driver’s safety briefing, took my test and got my “professional” drivers license.  I did drive a bit around base and a little off base; I was comfortable with driving on the left hand side of the road I just need to work on hugging the center line more since the roads here are so narrow. We did a bit of car shopping after I got my license, I climbed into a hot little 2 seater convertible that was in our price range then  looked more closely at the steering wheel- IT WAS COVERED IN MOLD! No wonder it was on sale, disgustingly fuzzy little car. So, needless to say, I’m still looking.

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