Tuesday, October 9, 2007

The Big Falls Trip

This past weekend Aya went on her first big over night trip to Niagara Falls. From what I understand there were 5 full buses from all over the upper East Coast that went. Many of whom were from Japan.

Aya said she spent a great deal of talking in her native tongue with all of the Japanese and stayed up very late most nights talking about their experiences here and maybe a little about themselves.

Admittedly she said she felt bad for the other exchange students (from Europe and other parts of Asia) who were talking amongst themselves in English most of the time and were left feeling awkward during the trip since the mob of Japanese exchange students were all chatting in Japanese.

We didn’t get a lot of feedback on how else the whole trip went, only that she had a good time and talked with a lot of Japanese.

The weather this year was a lot milder compared to the previous year, when they received several inches of snow in Buffalo. Regardless I helped Aya pack a rain jacket and another layer jacket in case it got too chilly. She told me this year there was no need as the weather was tolerable.

4 comments:

Suzanne G. said...

Hi Brian,

Thanks for commenting on my blog. I'm glad you stopped by.

I understand that Japanese culture is very limiting for women. Is it true that a Japanese female cannot say "no" because there is no proper construction?

It sounds like you've made her at home. That's wonderful

Brian S said...

She's getting more comfortable, though I don't know for how low considering the temperature is dropping and she's never seen below 40 degress Okinawa.

Fingers crossed

Suzanne G. said...

I'm glad that your student it enjoying the USA. any plans for her to see the Grand Canyon?

Brian S said...

Interesting you mentioned the Grand Canyon: They a whole group of them left Las Vegas and drove like 6 hours or so to the Grand Canyon.

However, the trip coordinators didn't account for the time of day they arrived and the time of year - for the Canyon as you know is a Big Hole and when its dark its a Big Black Hole; they couldn't even seen 20 feet from the bus into an abyss. (So they were disappointed they didn't see anything do to lack of sunlight.)