Meeting the Parents

9/16/05
After another full morning of orientation, we were given a few hours to chill, and I spent them gift-wrapping the o-miyage (souvenirs) from home for my new host family. I was really looking forward to meeting them; they looked really kind in the photo I was given on Wednesday.

We were all herded into an auditorium and lined up on stage, where we had to take the microphone one at a time and introduce ourselves to the audience of all the host moms who had come to pick us up. It was a little awkward, because it felt like we were being paraded about, and not many of us knew much of what to say, except, I'm so and so, Hajimemashite! (Nice to meet you.) My new host parents speak almost no english, except for a choice word or two, and my limited Japanese vocabulary always seems to disappear at moments under pressure (ie. oral examinations and, now, meeting my new Okaasan.) We didn't have much we could say to each other, and so she just chatted away in Japanese, maybe thinking I understood her. She had a little electronic dictionary, and was looking up words nonstop.

Because the apartment is close to campus (unlike many others who have to ride the train for an hour or even more) we were supposed to walk, but my stupid carry-on was prohibitively, grotesquely, heavy. She telephoned Otoosan, who came and picked us up.

I was still feeling a lot of weight from the night before, there having been no resolution, no way to solve the fact that my life at home had just been blown to bits. The fact that it was entirely my fault made it even harder to cope with. I spent the first few hours just trying to smile and nod when ever I heard a word I recognized, but I was dying inside.

My host parents were so incredibly kind to me those first couple of days. I know I must have seemed horribly disappointed with the whole situation, because of the distress I was in, and I was so aghast that they might think I was ungrateful or unhappy with the arrangement that I made my very best effort to explain what I could of the messed up situation, by looking up words in my little pocket dictionary. I think I left them entirely confused, and thinking I was just daft, and a bit homesick. Oh well, I tried.

It turns out that I must have gotten my story across well enough, because I found out in a round about way through my classmates that all the host moms like to gossip. By Monday, half of the group new all about my sordid soap opera, thanks to the hostmom hotline. Guess that is a lesson well learned.