wakarimasen!

I pretty much never say "why me?"...just not my way of thinking. But I am almost saying it as of last week's random "Japanese culture project" groupings. For Japanese class that is.

Truthfully, I foresaw this before it happened, but--due to a random draw from a bag of colors, in which I selected むらさき (murasaki), otherwise known as violet, I found myself in a group with the following 2 individuals: A quiet guy who may be completely participative if I can get him to speak or return emails, and...oh my goodness...crazy girl.

Can you picture Little Orphan Annie's face, with anime girl eyes? Of course you can't. But try. Then add overly processed hair (dyed black) that reminds me of a doll that went through the dryer, too much makeup, and (the crowning touch, so to speak,) a plastic tiara. Throw in strangely erratic impulse control, such that she blurts tangential thoughts out mid-class on the days when she speaks. The other days she comes in late and says nothing. And, she told me with the expression of a stunned bushbaby--she doesn't email. But she texts. Ok. So, I've typed up two proposals for what we might present in our allotted 10 minutes, and how we might divide duties. I will give them to these children tomorrow. They will think I'm a pushy old middle-aged person. But here's the thing. They can either communicate and do something, or they cannot. And if they don't--oh well, I'm auditing, they're not.

Meanwhile, I do enjoy everything else about Japanese class. I am a bit befuddled, this chapter, by the introduction of a page-load of adjectives. It's not that adjectives require conjugating in Japanese, I can deal with that. It's just that Japanese vocabulary doesn't adhere to my brain in the way the more familiar Euro-based lingos do. Japanese adjectives all look something like this: hagazukimurasagii. (except in hiragana, like this: はがずきむらさぎい。) Only you can take the syllables, shake them up in a bag, and reassemble in any configuration that pleases you. And it all seems meaningless to my Euro-cooked mind grid. I realize that, in some way, this must be good for me, because my brain hurts.