Friday:
After
a long train journey, during which Michael and myself whiled away the hours
listening to J-POP and writing meiji cards, we arrived at Hinton Admiral Train
station. As we left the train, we
all found ourselves being greeted by a fat Australian man attempting to speak
Japanese(at the time he seemed awful, but later he did turn out to speak the
language excellently). Me, Mike,
Joe, Tyrone, Johnny Chan and Kennan all froze in horror, before being herded
into a small, cramped bus with a load of people who all seemed to know each
other, and driven off into the darkness.
After a painfully slow drive, we drew up to the Avon Tyrrell Activity
Centre, a large, impressive, ominous building, that in the dark made us all
think of Resident Evil(I kept expecting zombies to come crawling out of the
doors..........). The inside was
also very reminiscent of Resident Evil, a large mansion filled with wooden
staircases and corridors. After
being ushered into to the den of evil, made to take off our shoes and driven
into a large, main room, the weekends organiser (Lydia-sensei), began to
speak. Words cannot describe the
feeling that burned through my blood, crawling up into the dark back alleys of
my brain to scream into my brain: ESCAPE!
But I couldn`t. None of us
could. After Lydia`s opening
speech, the “ice-breaking games” began.
(Long pause)
Hmmmmmm.
Well,
enough about that, on. After
these, we were free to roam as we pleased.
Me, Mike and Tyrone retreated to the haven of our room after a couple
of short games of pool, feeling very anti-social and giving death stares to
the Japs sharing the same room as us. The
whole building was hot, and there was a nasty stickiness to the air that kept
making you want to wash your hands...Just before I fell asleep, I felt a wave
of horror go through my body. A
weekend here.
Help
me.
Saturday:
I
woke up on Saturday, fully expecting to absolutely loathe the place.
The day began with so called, “warm up exercises.”Huh, the only
muscles I exercised during that were my mouth muscles when I yawned.
Despite this, however, we all felt a lot better.
The hot sticky feeling of the night before had gone, and in the day the
house was actually quite pleasant. Perhaps
we would enjoy it after all. After
breakfast, we were split up into different groups and our lessons began.
At this point I really began to enjoy myself.
It wasn`t like lessons that we
have at school(although they lasted for the same amount of time), we did
activities, role plays, and actually learnt a lot of useful Japanese(for
example, directions). I also was
getting to know the other people in my class, all of whom were very nice people.
In particular I got on with two incredibly nice Japanese people in my
group, Akie and Tasuku. Akie was an extremely cute and fun 16 year old Japanese
girl.............mmmmmmm
(Andrew hugs chest and smiles)
....mmmmmm.....oh, excuse me, where was I...Oh yes, the people.Ahem.
Well, we all got on really well, and after a few lessons me and the Japs
were getting on especially well. Anyway,
we then broke up for lunch, and I rejoined my friends for a barbeque, before me
and Mike retreated upstairs to listening to the melodious strains of “misfits”
and Faith No More on Tyrone`s stereo....
(Andrew sings loudly)
Lost in spaaaace (Misfits)........ Oh
sorry. After this, it was back to
lessons, where I continued to develop friendships, especially with Akie.
By dinner, I had been introduced to all the other Japanese people, and
was getting along extremely well with all of them.
That evening, after “being social”, me, Mike and Joe once again
retreated to our room to while away the hours listening to
evil-yet-so-incredibly-likeable music on Tyrone`s stereo(him and Kennan were off
trying to score with some chicks.............).
Suddenly, just as me and Mikey were moshing away, in burst a group of
Japs. Before long a massive
party(well, a not that big party, alright...a tiny one!) Was in full swing, with
frantic moshing combined with amateur acrobatics.
After all the fun we went and watched the speech contest and the
performances, which was kool, b4 me and Tyrone treated everybody to a display of
our breakdancing ability..........
After
this, we all(Japs included) went upstairs and chatted `till late, and then me
and Mikey finally went to sleep.
Sunday:
After
“accidentally” sleeping through the warm-up exercises we had our final
lessons, then the closing ceremony. After
sadly saying goodbye to the Japs, we are returned to the train station and went
home, happy in the knowledge that I had learned some Japanese, made new friends
and had one of the best weekend of my life.
Andrew
Joseph
