And Then There Were 150 More

We have been infiltrated and totally invaded!

Except not, and I am really excited...

Willamette has a sister-school in Saitama, which is a province of Tokyo, where Salem has a sister 'city'. I use the term loosely as it is a province of Tokyo. They have a sign pointing to Salem, which notes that it is somewhat over 7,000 miles.

This sister school is called "Tokyo International University" (TIU). This sistership allows the two schools to trade students in "exchange students". We send students with the Japanese Study Program (JSP), and they send their students as Tokyo International Students of America (TIUA), and send them to the sister school on our campus.

As of two days ago, the monotony of campus was broken as 150 TIUA students arrived, fresh from Japan, and started their orientation. They generally have an expression that says "Oh. My. God." Americans are much more forward, like to look people in the eye when speaking, and tend to have different rules about personal space. So they are practicing acting 'American' by not having issues with eye contact, being less personal-space-bubble-paranoid, accepting open displays of affection (like hugs) that are unseemly in Japan, and trying to keep up with the language.

English, despite popular belief of those who grew up speaking it, is really difficult and complex. People who speak all the other billions of languages in the world have a better chance of learning Russian and German (difficult to English Speakers) than learning English properly...

And then there is the interesting fact that TIUA students tend to, when they know English from books not conversation, have 'perfect', grammatically correct English.

And then they come to Willamette, where it all goes to hell as they learn conversational, very poor English.

There are a good handful of them in WISH, and they are all really nice. I look forward to hanging out with them soon.

Oh, I spent a good hour talking to them instead of doing homework (HW). And being shown off as the resident Native American in WISH, as well as having my jewelry, basketry, and flute shown off to the awed TIUA students.

...

For more general news, my schedule has gotten more busy. Every Monday and Wednesday I am going to Sparks with Alexis. We are only there for half an hour right now, but I was told not to do more than that at first after having not been going and working out for a loooong time.

Now to stop rambling and let you go back to the regularly scheduled tedium of the day.