Please be my friend. No, not you.

(just a warning; feeling rather frustrated today, so this one is going to begin to approach scathing)

So today I went to my host dad's English class that he teaches at Tohoku Dai. The class was all first and second year students and when I started speaking in English their mouths pretty much dropped to the floor because they thought I was Japanese. In possibly the most awkward situation I've been placed in so far this trip to Japan, "I hope you can help out during the lesson" turned into "I'm going to force each student to ask you a question in English in front of the whole class". Terrible choice. As the kids struggled through their English and I struggled to listen, I kept glaring at my host-dad in a "why the hell are you doing this" kind of way. But it turned out to work out pretty well in the end - they students tried really hard and were all really nice. One guy's question was "do you have a picture of your girlfriend", and when I took my wallet out, everyone in the class was like "oooooooHhhhh' since most people here don't carry around pictures of their boyfriends/girlfriends in their wallets. So I then had to go around the whole class showing everyone as they ooed and ahhed at Hyunjoo's beauty.

After class a few of the girls came up to me and adorably asked me to be their friend. I don't know that I'll actually be friends with them, but it was nice to finally meet some people who are closer to their birth than death.

Right now, my host family's friend Elaine is here for dinner. She, like every person my host family cares about, is an English teacher. She's a middle-aged Scottish woman who seems to be married to a Japanese guy and have some kids. Like most adults here I've met so far, she's nice but not particularly interesting. Here are a couple sterling quotes (and commentary) that should characterize Elaine:

"I walked by Talbots today, which is my favorite store, and I was so disappointed because I couldn't go in because I don't have enough money to buy anything." (gosh, Talbots. Don't get me started on this store. If your mom likes Talbots, sorry, but your mom has poor taste in clothing. And not having enough money to buy a drab, conservative blouse from Talbots is yet another reason to not become an English teacher in Japan).

"They should just build a Disneyland there. Or a golf course." (In Elaine's grating attempt to discuss Japanese economics with me, she kept stumping for increased tourism and that that should fix the economy. Riiight. And she seemed to think that buy sinking hundreds of millions in an amusement park or eating up precious land area with a gamble on a golf course (keep in mind - golfing in Japan can cost hundreds of dollars a round) would be a good investment for the northern regions where tourism is sparse. You be the judge).

"If you look at the income of a university, do you think you could judge how it is doing? .... Well it would be an interesting project wouldn't it?" (This one kind of offended me because she was clearly trying to ask me to somehow do a valuation of the school she works for and figure out how healthy its financial practices are. I politely explained this would take a lot of work, and probably wouldn't be worth doing, at which point she tagged it as an "interesting project." Yeah, interesting if I'm being paid exorbitantly for working 100+ hours a week to do it. High-five investment bankers!)

Tomorrow I get to meet "Bill", this rather unsavory character who seems to combine incredibly offensive sexual comments (I was handed the phone by my host dad to say Hi to Bill and he within 2 minutes he invited me to go out and get some "p***y" with him) with giving Christian sermons all in one package! Elaine called him "a hapless character", which says a lot, and he's currently divorcing his 28 year old wife (he's 55).

This is the slowest week of my life.