Student Dinner - Level 2 Group

I just finished cleaning up after dinner. I had my 5 Level 2 students over for supper: Aya, Kaori, Maiko, Miki, and Yoshiko.

I made pasta with cheese sauce and hotdog like sausage and green peppers. Unfortunately, I think it was a bit too bland. The ladies didn't seem to mind adding more cheese or black pepper, and two of them went and got seconds, so I guess it wasn't so terrible. My salad was perfect: green leaf lettuce, a few cucumber slices, and some roasted almonds with deep roasted sesame dressing. It was very delicous!

We ate around the two coffee tables and sat on cushions (a bit Japanese style dining). I had the kitchen table setup as a beverage bar with the coffee maker and hot tea options. I made some sugar cookies (based on the recipe Sarah K. gave me without the chocolate chips) so I served those for dessert, those along with some other treats made up out dessert.

While we munched on cookies and sipped tea/coffee we played a game I made up like 5 minutes before the first person arrived. There was a box of Pictionary cards in the closet. I started, drew a card, and picked a word from the five to describe. Whoever guessed it went next. It went pretty well. Maiko choose an animal word twice and it was very amusing watching her make that animal's "sound." Her version of what that animal "said" was very different from how any American or Japanese would normally mimick it. For example her owl sound was more like, "MMM! MMM!!" I could have sworn she was mimicking a moose. It was very cute!!! We all had a good laugh.

They arrived at 7:30 and departed at 9:30. It was a very nice dinner party. I really utilized some of my skills from my Aramark dining service days. I actually enjoy doing catering stuff.

Saturday's sleepover was fun. We rented three movies: Girl's Life (Japanese), Music & Lyrics (American), and The Princess and the Frog (American). I didn't really find the Japanese movie that interesting, but it was my first time watching The Princess and the Frog. We watched them between Saturday and Sunday combined. She brought over a video from a dance performance where she takes hip hop. It was sort of interesting, but it was difficult to see all the dances well. We had a lot of fun communicating in broken English and broken Japanese (I only know like 2 words in Chinese). She went to church with me for the special service. I nearly fell asleep after our singing part, because I didn't sleep well the night before, and I didn't understand anything, and there was no scripture reading so I couldn't even have a clue what the guest speaker was talking about. The majority of the audience was the Gospel Choir. There a good handful of non-Christians so I suppose that's good.

I finally went and practiced my clarinet at the church yesterday afternoon (I'm afraid to play it in my apartment). After about 20 minutes my mouth refused to hold shape on the mouthpiece. It was very distressing. I'm trying to learn a few Christmas pieces to perform at the church.