EARTHQUAKE

I was violently awoken this morning by an earthquake!!! A 7.2 earthquake hit off of the coast of my prefecture at 9:42 AM this morning. Truthfully, it wasn't so bad in Kanazawa. The room shook for about 30 seconds and a bottle of lotion fell off of my shelf. Other than that, everything was fine- the bottles of shampoo around my tub didn't even fall. However, apparently it was much worst further north. One of my friends said that her cabinets openned and her dishes fell out, her TV and washing machine fell over. A lady was killed in a town north of Kanazawa when a stone lantern fell on her. Pretty crazy!!! I have survived my first earthquake! It was on the news in Boston too- although it said that the earthquake hit Tokyo but it actually hit my prefecture.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/03/24/quake.japan.ap/index.html

Last week of school

Class 13
Class 18

This week and last week were the last Oral Communication classes for the year. We took pictures in most of the classes and here are two of my favorite classes. Some of these kids are hilarious and they are so good at English.

Views from the Kencho

Kanazawa

Alexis, Ikebana Artist Extraordinaire!

Our arrangement

Our names on the name plate: Jen Courudaa (Jane Calder) and Arekusasu Sumisu (Alexis Smith)


Jane and I entered an ikebana arrangement into an ikebana exhibition in Kanazawa this week. It was held in the Kencho, prefectural government building on the 19th floor. There were over 150 entries and we were the only non-Japanese people who entered. Needless to say our non-Japanese sounding names on the name plate had people stopping to take second look at our arrangement a few times. Jane and I entered a piece together- the idea was that the two parts of the arrangement complimented each other. Jane was in charge of the leafy party on the right side and I took care of the flowery part on the left side. Today we took a trip to the exhibition with Zach, Heather, Chris, Jess and Phill and it was kind of fun to see something that you made display for all to see.

St. Patty's Day!

Fiona is in fact one of the only Irish people in Kanazawa.Marie, Jess and me- you will notice the shamrock garland crown. I have to thank Dad and Cindy for sending me that. At first I had no idea what to do with it but on a whim I brought it with me to the party and by the end of the night half of the place had on these crowns. It was fabulous!
Jane, Phill and me

Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day! Japan has borrowed many Western holidays and made them their own- people here are all over Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day. I expected St. P's Day not to be any different. On Friday I wore a green shamrock necklace to school (thank you for sending that to me, Dad and Cindy) and I assumed that people knew why I was wearing it. Well, apparently no Japanese people have even heard of St. Patrick's Day so I spent a few minutes in each class talking about it.

Last night, the foreigner bar had a St. Patrick's Day party and all of the foreigners of KZ were out in full force wearing green and making merry. It always seems pretty funny to go to these huge gatherings of foreigners but the parties are always fun nonetheless!

Oyama Shrine

It was a beautiful day in Kanazawa so I headed over to one of my favorite places- Oyama Shrine. Some of the flowers are starting to bloom and the contrast looks really nice with the snow that is rapidly melting.

Ikebana

Last week's ikebana and Jane
Bird of paradise

Sukiyaki Girl's Night

Fiona and the food
Amanda and CarolineFiona and Jane
Me, Jess and some meat. Mmmmm!

Fiona, Amanda, Caroline, Jess and I went for a lovely girl's night at Jane's apartment. We had a very Japanesey sukiyaki party and cooked up heaps of meat, veggies and noodles right on the table top.

SNOW!

This is the view that I woke up to on Tuesday.
Walking to school in the snow is slow going.
Snowy
And then on the way home from school it started to hail!

Just when we thought it was spring (it was 70 degrees on Sunday!), Mother Nature surprised us with a nice dumping of snow on Tuesday through Thursday. Oh Kanazawa......

Six for seven!

I have had some amazing luck with law schools and I am now six yeses (Franklin Pierce, Catholic, Suffolk, Stetson, Temple and UCONN) and only one no (BC- their loss!).

I heard from UCONN this weekend and the idea of going back to CT and being close to family is really exciting :) I am still waiting on two more schools and then I will have the difficult decision of deciding where to go. I sort of always assumed that I would only get into one or two schools so I never thought I would have such a tough decision. So if anyone wants to shed any light on any of these schools, please do!

:)

Karaoke

Caroline, Amanda and me
Me and Grant
Simon
On Friday night, I hung out with a bunch of people and we went to a bunch of places. One of the places we went was a karaoke bar owned by Simon's friend. Grant and Simon serenaded us and it was lots of fun!

Photos around KZ

The Sai River
The blue bridge- a Kanazawa landmark
The bright city lights

Marking tests

Best answers from this week's test:

"Would you mind shitting the door?" = "Would you mind shutting the door?"

Question: Use a comparative adjective to compare two teachers.
Answer: Zach is taller than Alexis. No one is more beautiful than Alexis.
Answer: Ms. Itaya is smaller than Alexis. (Ms. Itaya is pregnant!.... but I suppose still smaller than me.)
Answer: Alexis is prettier than Zach.
Answer: Zach is taller than Alexis.
Answer: Alexis is taller than Zach. (well, which one is it?)

Question: Do you want to buy the product? Why? Why not?
Answer: I'll buy that. Because I want to speak English funnier and I want to talk with people who is American, Canadian or English....... son of a bitch!!!
Answer: I don't want to buy it because I don't like sweets and I have problems about my math test. I may buy Math muffins, if any.