Day 39--Salsa Party

I spent almost the whole day at church today! Yay networks and speaking in Japanese! I didn't get a headache this time. Haha. Service, lunch, regular choir practice in the morning, Gospel choir in the afternoon, and salsa party at night ^^


Choir! In Japan!
I think shouldn't even go to gospel choir because it makes my throat hurt. Yeahhh, I canNOT belt. Can someone help me with that? (-__-) But the people are so nice and I love seeing their passion!!

Regular choir is fun and I LOVE LOVE LOVE that I get so many opportunities to SING while I'm here! Today I performed with them at the service! Except I hadn't gone to practice so I basically sight-read the song which had 2 key changes. Haha. Good thing it was easy. But, in my elitist-way, practice is a little annoying because the alto next to me is glaringly flat (does she not hear it?!), the sopranos have too much imposed vibrato, no one can sight-read so we go super slow, and (worst of all) there's almost no musicality, even after Natsuki tells us what to fix, it still sounds like everyone is singing how they would plunk notes on a piano. Doot doot doot. IT'S NOT DOOT DOOT DOOT, IT'S A PHRASE! But I still LOVE singing with them. I love sharing music with people. Especially people I'd never think I'd connect with. Old ladies who live in another country. Music is universal!


Salsa Party
The pastor(I think that's the right word?) and his wife (they are SOOOOO nice) invited us to a salsa party at his house--which is IN the church. On the 3rd floor. So they're there, like, all the time. It was fun because almost everyone was a Japanese learner, so it takes the pressure off constantly trying to listen and feeling out of the loop. There were 4 Chinese people, 1 Korean, 1 Japanese, and me. I LOVE hearing their Chinese-Japanese and Korean-Japanese accents. It's so cute!! I wonder what my American-Japanese accent sounds like. The Korean girl's name is Yunji and her major is pipe organ!!! Just like Dr. Lee!! They had Kirkland tortilla chips from Costco and homemade salsa with guacamole. SO GOOD. And turmeric rice and this kinda macaroni and cheesy thing. SO GOOD!! I love eating real food. 99% of the time I eat what I cook for myself which is never very good >_<. And I make the same things all the time.

It was so cool, a little frustrating, but mostly cool, to talk all in Japanese for the night, ESPECIALLY when you know that everyone in the room speaks a decent amount of English but you're just ignoring it for the sake of being respectful to the commonest language. Of course, talking in Japanese isn't exactly all in "Japanese," due to the extremely high katakana word usage, but whatever. The only time I started using a little English was when I started talking about how some Christians in America use the Bible as a reason to denounce gay rights, which leads to some liberals antagonizing Christians, and it's kind of a big messy thing. (If you're wondering it wasn't awkward or controversial really, it was just part of the conversation.) In any case, I felt a lot more comfortable speaking Japanese in that group setting than I do one-on-one or during choir, etc. practice (because in there, they're all native Japanese speakers making no effort to slow down.)

I said that I probably knew about 60% of French and 5% of Japanese and they all guffawed and remarked how humble I am, citing the example of typical un-humble Americans who say they can play piano but can only play that song where you rap your knuckles on the black keys. You know what I'm talking about. HAHA. I also apologized when I used an English word/phrase, much to their surprise and delight. It makes me sad though. Like, what, all the other American people you met were cocky and overbearing?! -__- What are your stereotypes and conceptions of Americans?

It really made me treasure the "network" that I'm forming here, happy to meet so many great people, kinda sad that it's a church, something I don't really connect with and can't immerse myself in fully, and sad that I'm leaving so soon. I can't even go to chuch for the next two weeks so I won't even see them. :/ But! One of the girls is going to school in Santa Monica this fall! To study dance! So we can meet up. :)

It just makes you realize that people are people. The more you meet people from all over, the more you realize how strikingly similar people are, despite the fact that we were raised in different countries speaking different languages. So much can be communicated despite those barriers. I was the only American there. The only one who'd ever even been there for more than a vacation. I'd never met some of those people before that night and yet I felt close with them after only a couple hours. Humanity is cool that way.

4th of July tomorrow. Yay?