OUT OF THE FRYING PAN AND INTO THE SUSHI
May 1st 2009 01:17
On the drive to my host mother’s house she told me a bunch of things I couldn’t understand, and I responded with things that she couldn’t understand. I’d always say, “What?” and she’d always ask, “Hm?”
We parked at some store where she went to pick up a dress. A number of her friends were there, and they looked at me up and down and said something, so I asked them, “What?” and they laughed. They gave me an incredibly hard piece of candy and made me eat it right in front of them. For no good reason there was a tiny dog there, just running around, and they made me pat it and stroke its ears.
My mother picked out her dress from a rack and told them a number of things before leading me to her car and heading to her home. After another ten minutes of “What?” we finally arrived.
Her home, which would be my home for a month, looked like this:
My host mother said something and opened the front door and let me in. When I looked inside I was surprised: the house looked worse than my room. All this time I’d assumed that every Japanese home was clean, but this home reminded me of one of the New York subway tunnels you’d see in the movies. There was litter everywhere, there were strange smells coming from every direction, it was dark. She brought me into the kitchen: there was no pantry – everything was scattered messily on the sink. My host mother pointed to a corner and I suddenly flinched. I didn’t know that somebody was actually sitting there. I guessed that she was the daughter, the one described in the document about my host family. She’s two years older than I am and is incredibly pretty. I sat down opposite to her. From her broken English I gathered she actually stayed in Sydney for two months. From my broken Japanese she gathered nothing.
Eventually my host brother and father walked inside the crowded room. I said hi to them but they said nothing back. My host mother, who’d been talking on the phone then, quickly handed it to me. She said,
“Um, nephew. Only speak in English.”
“Are you sure?”
My host mother nodded. The problem was the person on the other end of the line could only say “hello” and that was it. So we were there, on the phone, completely silent, my host family just staring at me, for five minutes. We then had dinner, which consisted of me not understanding anything my host mother was asking me and the rest of the family not saying anything to me at all and ignoring my questions. I was advised by the scholarship people to bring them a souvenir from Australia so, grinning, I handed them a stuffed toy koala and some chocolates. They glanced at it, told me to put it on the ground, and said nothing.
I went to bed that night missing my friends.
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Comment by Lily
Ars Poetica
here's hoping things get better, how long is the trip for?
~lily