Pages

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Sooner or Later

Everyone has bad days.  By the time I showed up to work (1) late, because I had spilled bright pink nail polish on the rug (2) exhausted, because I'm still not on a normal schedule yet and (3) frustrated, because of some early emails regarding my research back in Virginia, I wryly wondered if this was going to be that day.

By lunch time, I was pretty sure of it.  This did not bode well for the interview I had after lunch with the Director of the Global Center of Education who was funding my internship.  Nervously, I reviewed my presentation over and over.

This is how the rest of my day went:

The other girl in the office came up to me and sat down next to me and tried to make conversation with me.  When she failed miserably and I kicked myself again for not speaking Japanese, she begged another student to join in so we could all understand each other.  Yay!

I ate lunch alone.  Not yay.

Koji in my lab gave me a ride to my interview.  It turns out one of his favorite musical groups is the Carpenters which had me laughing to no end.  He also said he likes accordion music which made me skeptical until I listened to it.  His favorite musical genre though is jazz.  Yay!

I had my interview.  It didn't go as bad as I expected.  It turns out the Director has spent considerable time in Newport News, Va.  Yay?

I went to go find Koji and stumbled over my words in asking for him.  Not yay.

When I left the lab today, Koji chased after me to tell me that there would be a lab party on Friday.  Yay?!  (Definitely a Yay!  until I realized I have no idea what Japanese parties consist of)

I went home but got on the wrong bus and so ended up far from home.  Not yay.

I got to walk through a new part of Sendai and through the Castle ruins for the third time in 24 hours.  Yay.

Because of my bus mix-up, I ran out of daylight before I could walk to Sendai station to pick up a map that someone told me about.  Not yay.

I got home, idly flipped on the TV and found that the U-23 Samurai Blue team is playing live against New Zealand.  Yay!

So, not a bad day.  Just a normal one, full of ups and downs.  I'll take it.
An amusement park near where the bus dropped me off

This image is of LuXun's monument.  Last year, while trying to study Radiative Heat Transfer, I picked up his book (in Chinese) and read his personal account of why he decided to become a writer.  Apparently he had been attending medical school in Japan when a war broke out and he decided that what he needed to do was to help the Chinese better understand what it means to be Chinese and so he became an author.  It turns out, the medical school he attended was in Sendai.  Out of all the Chinese books, I read his.  Out of all the places in Japan, we both ended up in Sendai.


1 comment:

  1. Very exciting. At least your day wasn't totally bad!!!

    ReplyDelete