Hello again, I return from my voluntary and abrupt hiatus to talk about myself, the egotistical devil I am. Unfortunately, I will not be catching up on all my lost time, because it's simply not practical to fill in, and it's not like anybody will read weeks of exposition anyway. Anybody who does read this will have been more or less filled in on the gaps personally already.
School was pretty typical today; my Intro to Theater class had a short quiz on Oedipus Rex and a long review on Greek theater. I have no love for Classical Greek mentality or their arts. Logic was review aswell; nothing new was covered, just old homework. Nobody said anything interesting or clever or even vaguely humorous. I ended up playing Sudoku on my computer, and doing tragically badly, I'm ashamed to say.
As class was being let out, I noticed the girl in front of me was drinking what appeared to be tea with diced apples at the bottom. It seemed peculiar, so on my way out I turned and asked her what it was. She turned up to look back at me, and I think I finally understand what people mean by the expression "her face was glowing." Some uncanny radiant glow was beaming off her and I almost had to squint a little bit. Her eyes weren't actually that big, but they sure seemed like they were; they were such a bright shade of blue or green or whatever color they were, they sparkled over the rest of her abnormally perfect complexion.
"Actually it's ginger!" she proclaimed with unbearable glee, "It settles your tummy!"
"Yeah, I know, I really like ginger actually." I noticed she had a little mustache. Details, but the dark band of fuzz above her lips settled my suspicion that fuchsia isn't her natural hair color.
"Mm-hm! And it adds a really nice bit of spice!" The word "spice" came out so sickeningly cute I honestly couldn't say whether I thought it was attractive or disgusting. I asked her if was just regular tea, which it was, and after the worlds most enthusiastic sales pitch I said that I would definitely try it sometime.
My opinion on her is hard to settle. On the one hand, Organic, Natural, Environmentalist enthusiasts annoy the hell out of me because the loud ones are so bitter and judgmental. When I went to school at ULL I had several classes with hippies that would be enraged with anyone who so much as joked about Big Oil or even made a satirical argument in favor of genetically modified vegetables. The antagonism I feel from these groups is so overwhelming that I get headaches whenever I'm within 50 feet of a white person with dreadlocks or bamboo clothes. On the other hand, while I have no reason to doubt that her love for herbal medicine is at least partially ignorant or misguided, there is absolutely no other reason I can find to dislike her. Every negative trait she seems to have is an overabundance of something incredibly good. And in the words of Sonic the Hedgehog, "balance makes me want to hurl." I suppose I have no rational excuse not to, so I will try ginger in my tea, and I will talk to her again. Maybe she will persist to be unbearable; maybe I'll warm up to my Hippie brethren.
So after I got out of that, Alex and I went to Liberty to have lunch with two of the Japanese exchange students, Yuki and Yuki. This was actually my second time going to Liberty, the first time being at orientation, and I have to say it's all bad at all. Anyway, to clarify some confusion, let me explain who Yuki and Yuki are. Yuki and I have World History together from 5-8, and we sort of became friends when we started talking after class one night. She has a very plain style, mainly blues and grays, but she has a very pretty face and hair and a very sweet personality. Yuki, on the other hand, I just met today. She has slightly bleached, long straight hair, and wears stylish Japanese clothes with all its black and gold and unnecessary chains and zippers; kind of an understated version of what you'd see in a book of Harajuku fashion (or what you'd see in an ad for Claire's). I didn't talk to her so much but she has a much better American accent and a relatively bubbly personality, which is a little more comforting from my loud American perspective.
We didn't talk about much or anything important, but I left lunch running late for German and with a greater appreciation for Japan and the people it produces. I found out that becoming a flight attendant in Japan requires a lot of training and is highly competitive. Dedication to service like that is very inspiring, especially coming from lazy America where people feel like serving others makes them less of a person. The inferiority complex here is astounding.
So German. By now the class is spoken almost exclusively in German and I can only barely understand the gist of what our instructor is saying. There's a big difference between studying on your own with the textbook and Livemocha and actually listening to a fluent speaker tell you what to write about in another language.
Anthropology was nothing exciting. I learned a little bit about Patrilineage and Matrilineage and how they're important and watched a video about eunuchs in Bombay. The connection was lost on me.
When I got out of class, Alex told me it was sprung on him at the last minute that Rose, the girl who lived in our apartment over the summer to help pay for rent, was coming over to stay the night or maybe even the entire weekend with her sister. I don't mind having them stay over, but I was pretty skeptical about two women I barely know squeezing into our living room without me really having time to think about this or prepare.
All the worries aside, they arrived, and it wasn't too bad. Rose and Alex's mutual friends came over, chatted, and went out to get food. I wasn't hungry, or in the mood to have dinner with five other people, but I decided to join them for a walk to keep a good number and to get some air. Charleston sidewalks are just not quite big enough to walk with three people next to each other, so we nicely divided into three groups of two, and I spent our little trek alongside Rose's sister Olivia.
Talking to Olivia was actually a bit of an eye-opener for me. She's my age, which made her slightly more identifiable, and has as much trouble as me finding her academic calling. When I asked what she wanted to do, she told me she wanted to direct film, but she's afraid to major in theater because she doesn't want to get stuck in one specific path when she doesn't even know if she's going to succeed. That really struck me, being on my third major and still contemplating another change. The worst thing is, I also know exactly what I want to do. I love film. I want to make animated and live-action films, maybe directing if that's how to do it. But I'm afraid to do theater because I feel like it's too focused and I'll miss out on all the stuff I could learn if I settle on a major. It's a totally irrational attitude. Fortunately, before I make my final leap into a major, I'm going to be acting in a play this semester, and find out if it's really the thing for me.
When everybody finally settled on a place to eat, I went home. I've been with people all week and I didn't want to prolong my social anxiety for another hour and a half. Robert came out of his cave, complained about the unexpected guests which it turned out nobody told him about, and we went to CVS to grab a buttload of soda, apparently to feed the hummingbirds or something. We sat around, chatted about life, and I went to my room to write and go to bed before the mob returns.
