February Orientation Meeting

Every first Saturday of the month is our "orientation meeting." That's where I give my monthly speeches. This month's went well. I hadn't seen very many of my rotary friends since the last meeting, so it was really good to see everyone again. My speech went well. It was short though, because I really didn't do a lot of speech-worthy things in the last month. I was always really busy, but I can't really remember with what now. Yikes...

After the meeting almost all of my rotary friends went to another exchange student's birthday dinner. I tagged along just so I could see everyone. There were over 20 exchange students there! It was crazy! Pretty much every exchange student from the area that I knew, plus a few more. We all went to T.G.I. Fridays for dinner. I stayed a little bit, but left early with Katja. For one, T.G.I. Fridays is SO expensive. Also, Katja said there was a "free jazz cafe" by her station that night. So I figured I'd go see what that was with her.

We bought dinner at a convenience store and then went to find this jazz cafe. She'd seen a sign for it, but didn't know exactly where it was. We found it pretty easily. It turned out to be an old guy playing a saxophone to a little tiny coffee shop full of even older people. And it was packed! We probably would have gone in and stayed for it if there had been any seats...

After wandering around her station and looking at all the little shops, Katja mentioned that there was a grocery store that sold lots of cheap snacks if I wanted to go there. It was probably like a 15 minute walk, but it was nice. I loved the store! It had tons of random snacks, including several things I haven't seen since I was in America. And everything was pretty cheap. We ended up buying a bag of banana chips and a bag of rasins and splitting half and half. It's proabably a good thing I don't live by that store. By the time we got back to her station it was a good time for me to head home. I had eaten an unhealthy amount of dried fruit on the walk back, too. It was a really fun night though. I love hanging out with Katja because we just do random, cheap things. And she is so fun to talk with!

As I was waiting in the train station I sat down on a bench. The lady next to me leaned over and asked where I was from and we started talking. It actually turned out that she was taking the same train as me when we changed at Yokohama station, so we talked for quite a bit. She was really nice. It surprised her that I was only in high school. When I mentioned my school was catholic, she asked what kind of catholic (Japanese people get the terms catholic and christian mixed up sometimes) school it was. When I looked a little puzzled she was like, "like mormon, or ...." I said, "oh! It's just catholic, but I'm mormon!" It surprised me that that was the first denomination on her list, so I asked her how she knew it.

It turns out that she goes to the mormon church closer to my school every Thursday for english lessons. Apparently, there is a weekly english class that anyone can take offered there. She said at first she thought I was a missionary! She isn't mormon herself, but it sounded like she might have gone once or twice. She was such a nice woman. She said she likes to try to talk with foreigners and practice her english, which was actually very good. It was really random, but it was fun to talk to her. It doesn't happen too often, but occasionaly someone will talk to me on the train and ask why I'm here and such.

Okay, sorry this is a pretty boring post. And there are no pictures. I'll get a better one up tomorrow about Harajuku. I have to keep my posts chronological though, or this would be confusing to read.