Progress Sort of.

Today, I decided to actually wake up and try going to class (hey now, it's only the third day of class; i haven't been that lazy yet). So I tried going to a Public Finance lecture this morning, and I showed up and all the students were just hanging out in the lecture hall talking, reading, or sleeping. The only thing missing was the professor. After sitting around for about 30 minutes, people started leaving, so I left too. I guess the professor decided to play hookey. You know how professors can be, so incorrigible.

I then had a half-decent curry-chicken-katsu lunch in the dining hall, picked up my 'student I.D.', which is in actuality just an I.D.-shaped piece of card stock with the information hand-written and my picture glued to it. Not exactly the luxurious and ingenious Penn Card. I then made it home just in time to receive two great pieces of mail: one from mom containing instant chicken noodle soup, taco mix, and taco shells (I have to hand it to her, this care package was absolute genius!) and an oh-so-hipster-yoshitomo-nara postcard from the incomparably thoughtful Sean Kramar. Hooray for mail!

I then woke up from a nap in time to have Writing and Reading lecture this afternoon. Writing class was fine, but our professor for reading class didn't show up either! Luckily, he sent one of his minions to give us our homework and tell us he wasn't coming. He must have been out with my public finance professor, riding around on skateboards and asking people to buy them cigarettes and beer from the convenience store.

The best part of today was that Jong Chong-ri, this korean 'girl' that I have Writing and Reading class with and that I met during Orientation for the economics department helped me figure things out around campus (I put girl in quotes because today I found out she is 38. 38!! Geez, I didn't think she was any older than 30). She helped me register as a member of the school Co-Op and register to use this here computer room. Now I don't have to go downtown to use the internet anymore! And there are no time limits. Oh, and our last names have the same Chinese character (for those who can view japanese on their comp: 鄭), so we have that going for us. Unfortunately, she barely speaks English, so we get by on broken Japanese. Incredibly broken.

Now I'm waiting to meet one of my two tutors, Ms. Takako Noheji. Hopefully she can help me figure some more things out, though she told me she doesn't speak English. Great. I meet my other tutor, Mr. Tsuyoshi Chiba, tomorrow. He does speak English, so maybe he'll be a better resource.