Lucky Number Seven

I can't remember if I told you guys this and I'm too lazy to go check, so here you are: Last week was midterms. We had 2-3 tests a day and got out of school early everyday, around 10am. Most of the time exchange students aren't expected to take the tests, but I, in the mess that was the first few weeks of school, managed to sign myself up to take a whole bunch. I took: English I, English Grammar, World History, Math II, Math B, Geography, and Japanese A. Here are the results:

English I: 83. There was some stuff I had to translate and I had issues with it, but the rest was fine.

English Grammar: 80. Same deal as English I, but my friend Yoshika got an 84. She was THRILLED that she scored higher than, well, the person who speaks fluent English, and I could not stop laughing. I'm not sure what it says about language classes if the native scores lower than someone who isn't quite fluent, but oh well. At least I made Yoshika's day :D

World History: The teacher didn't score it. Instead, he drew an epic picture in red ink of a famous guy and wrote, "Who is this? Do your best!" After I opened up the paper, I went around showing pretty much everyone that a) I failed the test, and b) our history teacher is actually a pretty good artist.

Math II: People around me were getting 40's and 50's (which is about average). You know what I got? I got a 2. I was proud that I got more than 0 :D What's happening to my "must get straight A's" standard???

Math B: My absolute favorite. See, I got a 7, and, upon seeing the horror on my face, the guy behind me said, "Don't worry- that's lucky number 7!" IT MADE MY DAY. I dunno why, but for some reason that made my day 10x better. So next time you see someone get a 7 on a test, say what my new bff did, and everything will be right in the world :)

Geography: Not much to say here- the teacher didn't grade my test.

Japanese A: I had a special test that was really just translating some kanji. I did alright, but I haven't gotten the test back yet. So we'll see.

Other that that, I finally started violin lessons! THANK GOD. And surprise surprise, I could understand a lot of what my teacher said to me. Sweet ^^

Lastly, I have a piece of advice for people exchanging to Japan. For the first few months, school tends to be 1 of 2 things- either everyone is tripping over themselves to talk to you, or they're pretty shy and won't really approach you. My school is more the second kind. What I've learned is that I have to just go up to people and talk to them if I want to make friends. I kept on thinking people were scared of me or that they just didn't want to talk to me for a while, but now I've realized that it's more of them being shy. So be brave and just talk to people. Most of the time they're really curious but don't have the courage to initiate a conversation. Of course it's also easier now that I can speak more Japanese, but still! That's my advice.

I guess that's all for now... Well, a lot's been happening, but I don't know how to say it all without writing a novel! What I'd really like is to have a questionaire for my next post- write a question in the comments about some aspect of my Japanese life you're curious about, and I'll answer. I don't know how many people actually read this, so this may or may not work... but it's worth a shot!

Mata ne!