The Coolest Kid in School For Two Days

I have derived the perfect formula for popularity: winning personality, red hair and a double room as a single.

One of the above is most certainly true, one is partially true, and the last has been passed into law in a place known as "My Delusions." You can guess which is which.

My roommate from France apparently decided at the last minute to get an apartment in the city with her boyfriend instead of living in Seminar House 1, so for two days (there were two more during the time she lived here) I had my double all to myself. But, since my first roommate has gone AWOL, CIE has decided to replace her with a new model, Meredith. She is recycled from a homestay here in Japan (brand new models are hard to find after the first week of school), and she comes fully equipped with an English speaking function, and potentially Japanese as well. We'll see how it works out.

I spent most of the afternoon the other day with my speaking partner, Shino, which reaffirmed my beliefs that Japanese is exhausting after a while, and that this color of red hair is spectacular. Shino introduced me to two of her friends, Sayaka and Ayana. They all think my hair and my name are very cute. Anyway, I tried my best to speak as much Japanese as I could, and focused reeeeeaaaally hard on understanding every word, but there was still some English speaking going on (both Sayaka and Shino are first-year English majors). Ayana did tell me I speak Japanese well, but I'm convinced that a dead hamster would trump my linguistic skills in Japanese.

My first spoken Japanese class went much better than trying to understand Shino, Sayaka and Ayana though. I understood about 85% of the Japanese my teacher used in class, and what I didn't know were only a couple vocabulary words here and there. I'm finally convinced that I'm in the right level of Japanese. Now I just need to study for Friday's review test so I can stay there.