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August 17th, 2008 Part 2 It is actually the 18th here, but I am not yet asleep and so do not count it as a new day. As I was going on about before, the class is very interesting. Though it was painful to read Genji, we had a lot of lessons based on it.
Genji is about Japanese aesthetics in the Heian period (somewhere around 1000 AD). So our daily lessons, after a discussion about a book a couldn't remember, were things like calligraphy and poetry. Thursday we did sumo exercises. HOLY CRAP!!! Sumos are fricking flexible for big guys. All the little people in the class were put to shame by a video that didn't even have English subtitles.
So I guess that means Wednesday we did poetry. The poems were supposed to be about something that suddenly inspired us. We broke up into groups and each made a line. Nothing was coherent. It was amusing.
Then Tuesday we did calligraphy. We used the brushes and 'instant' ink, as opposed to making the ink the traditional way. Then we were given a choice of kanji to make our masterpiece. It was an experience, almost exhilarating. My choice was 'hikari'- light. After a bunch of practice pages we were given real calligraphy paper. We had five pages to make our masterpiece. All mine on the good paper sucked pretty bad. My favorite one was the last one I did on regular computer paper. If it survives, and my scanner, I'll post it. We'll see.
BIG NEWS!! The school is being evacuated. I am staying with family I didn't even know until now. Now, in between homework and school presentations, we have to get most of our stuff picked up. We'll be gone a few days maybe, but not away from work. Yes, even though we are not in school we still have to do homework. I guess it would have been too inconvenient for a storm to hit during the regular semester. I just have to hope the important stuff survives and the dorms don't flood or anything.
 Masilaca22 · Mon Aug 18, 2008 @ 06:48am · 0 Comments |
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August 17th 2008 After days filled with reading. I have managed to free up some time since Friday. I did manage to read all of the Tale of Genji in three days, no matter how painful, and write a paper about it in a day and a half, again very painful.
Other than mandatory events for freshman, I didn't do much until Friday. Friday I wandered around some, talked to friends, and went to a house cook out. After wandering around some, I ran into my room mate who was going over to another friend's dorm to play Apple to Apples. I love that game. So I tagged along. On the box, it says the game was meant for like 4-10 people. At our peak we had 14 players.
Immediately after the game I went to the cook out on the beach. Going to school in Florida can really rock sometimes. I got to hang out with other people from my house and the other houses in the complex while the Resident Activators (RA's) cooked for us. Then we started to play with the frisbee. We joined in on a game of Ultimate Frisbee, but I didn't get all that much play time.
After getting cleaned up the school hosted a Casino Night. It was pretty awesome. They had portable tables brought in and had the whole hall set up like a casino. They gave us little vouchers when we went in that served as money for getting chips. (This is still a school, like they'd let us use real money.) We started out with 25 and after an hour I was down by 6 playing blackjack. No, I did not try to redeem myself. I passed my chips on to a friend and went to bed.
I read nearly an entire book Saturday. We read Thousand Cranes for class. Though half the length of Genji, it was a much quicker read and just as confusing-ish. Most of my exercise until the tennis season starts has been wandering around the campus. It's not big, but it's interesting to just walk around. In the evening the school sponsored a trip to the cinema. We saw Mama Mia. It was frickin hilarious and even a non-musical-liking person would have enjoyed it. At least somewhat.
We got our notice of evacuation by the school. As it stands now, we must leave the campus tomorrow afternoon. One of the downsides of going to school in Florida. And it didn't even wait until the whole school started, this is just the freshman orientation period.
~Possible part 2 to come later
Masilaca22 · Sun Aug 17, 2008 @ 08:10pm · 0 Comments |
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