two
i got accepted to the university of minnesota's liberal arts college. i was given two weeks to confirm whether or not i planned to attend, and one week to apply for housing.
it wasn't until two days later that i finally got ahold of pat. he said in no uncertain terms that he's not coming back, to go ahead and confirm my attendance, and that he still wants to wait until june to give me his final decision. i said okay. we hung up.
i pulled back the covers, i sat on my bed, i opened my biology textbook to chapter 44, osmoregulation and kidney function, and then i cried for two hours. i couldn't stop or concentrate or breathe through one nostril, so instead i wrote pat a letter. it wasn't until later that i noticed that i was spilling my guts out onto cutesy japanese stationery that looked like this:
anyway. last night pat and i had a two-hour phone conversation about nothing in particular. but before we hung up we agreed that we'd both still like to be friends after all is said and done. my guess is that i'll need at least a year to get over him, but in the meantime i don't want to cut him out of my life completely. so we'll probably write letters once a month until... until.
i'm satisfied.
this is why studying grammar is important:
up until recently i assumed that the difference between "can i" and "may i" was common knowledge.
before i continue, i have to admit that i too am guilty of saying "can i" instead of "may i." in the past i've actually tried switching over to "may i" to be grammatically correct but it just sounds so archaic. i've since given up, but i know in the back of my mind that it is in fact "may i" and not "can i." this is how i thought it was for everybody.
anyway, that all changed one fateful day last week (or was it two weeks ago?) in the middle of my independent study in japanese. usually it's just my japanese teacher and i, but that day there was also a japanese 1 student making up a test. i don't know his name, so i'll just call him cecil.
long story short, my japanese teacher's electronic dictionary bit the dust, so cecil offered to lend us a hand.
what cecil meant to say was, "may i take a look?"
what he actually said was, "am i physically capable of seeing it?"
in english "can i" is perfectly acceptable even though it shouldn't be, but in japanese it makes absolutely no sense. so my japanese teacher and i laughed at his expense and talked about him behind his back in japanese.
this is why studying grammar is important. if you're going to do a direct translation from english to japanese, at least make sure the english is grammatically correct first.
"am i the only one who thinks diagramming sentences is fun?"
and just in case you're wondering, yes, i actually diagrammed that sentence by hand just now, and no, not for any reason in particular.
speaking of grammar... here are the results of an online quiz i took.
i feel like i should end that sentence with like a billion exclamation points.
| English Genius You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 86% Expert! |
| You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go! Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it! For the complete Answer Key, visit my blog: http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/. |
How you compared to other people your age and gender:
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| Link: The Commonly Confused Words Test written by shortredhead78 on Ok Cupid |
as a general rule i don't take online quizzes because they're not fun and therefore are a waste of my and everybody else's time. especially quizzes like this one, that tell you you're you. i am not making this up.
and now, a japan entry:
tuesday, june 1st, 2004 (i finally made it to june!)
on tuesday morning the train was PACKED. bodies were pressed up against me on all sides. i don't think i had ever seen it that crowded. for some reason i had the urge to burst out laughing.
moegi and i agreed to switch trains as soon as possible.
the train stopped at suma, four stations away from maiko. the doors opened and it was at that exact moment that i realized that i was on the opposite side of the train and that it was impossible, that we'd never make it out in time. but somehow i managed to fight my way through the crowd and come out on the other side, victorious! i had no idea where moegi was and i didn't care, and i shouted, "i'm free! i'm free!" i'm sure i looked fucking ridiculous, but oh well.
as it turned moegi made it out just in time. had it not been for a kindhearted businessman who sensed moegi's shyness we would have been separated, which wouldn't have been the end of the world, but.
on the train moegi helped me put my cultural festival info together. i was supposed to make a project by myself about american culture, and i needed to invite everyone to come see my project in the cultural festival program. moegi dictated the invitation to me word for word, but don't tell anybody.
in ms. nguyen's class everyone (excluding me) did oral presentations on their favorite american songs. because ms. nguyen wasn't very strict, at least 50% of the class didn't take her seriously. supposedly moegi misunderstood and thought that you could give a presentation on ANY song, even though i had explained the project to her twice beforehand.
a girl whose name i can't remember off the top of my head did her presentation on beyonce's "crazy in love" even though she had no idea what it was about.
then we watched infernal affairs, a chinese gang movie. in chinese the movie's title is made up of three kanji: "nothing," "between," and "road," so "the road between nothing." i don't know who came up with "infernal affairs."
anyway, we watched the movie in chinese with english subtitles. because the chinese speak a mile a minute the subtitles went by one right after the other, and on top of that the plot was complicated. the girls were completely lost. i did my best to get them up to speed, but unfortunately i didn't know how to translate "spy," "gang," and "morse code."
in cooking class we made subuta, or pork (i almost typed "porn") and vinegar. mmm.
while i'm on the subject of pork (i did it again!), an analogy pat and i came up with:
but i digress. we cooked wantons, too. hopefully everyone knows what wantons are.
after our weekly kanji test i admitted to hyemi, ashley, and susan that i desperately wanted to go home to america. they asked why, and eventually we got to talking about cultural differences between japan and america. for instance, in america people stick to the right side when walking down the hallway or up/down stairs. but on escalators, forget it. but japan is exactly the opposite. the japanese will walk on whichever side of the hallway or stairs they damn well please, but on escalators it is understood that you stand on the right side and leave the left side open. except in osaka, which is, as di likes to say, bass-ackwards.
i also explained why i was frustrated with moegi. when you commute three hours total every day to and from school, all you want to do is sit and possibly take a nap. but moegi insisted on taking the express (second fastest) train. on the express all the seats were taken and i had to stand for 30 minutes every morning. but moegi refused to take the limited (the third fastest) even though it arrived at nishi-kita only minutes after the express. finally it got to the point where we split up at sannomiya and i just took the limited without her. fuck that noise.
the resemblance between my biology teacher and the student teacher was uncanny, so i drew charicatures of them side by side and wrote underneath in japanese, "relatives?" it took the entire class period to draw, and after class i showed it to a handful of people. some smirked, some chuckled. not the reaction i was hoping for. it definitely wasn't worth the 50 minutes i spent drawing it.
that night my host father came home from work and changed into a t-shirt that said "we love you" and i smiled inwardly.
we love you, resa. i hope you're a-okay. <3