- hana no joshikousei -

found Narnia book 1 in the recycle box downstairs. it's a pity to leave it there and let it face its end, so i kept it :D (although i've read this a long time ago).

*****

went to Tsukuba again, this time to attend an orientation at my sister's new high school. as a guardian not a student, of course.

students were asked to wear their uniforms from the previous school, but since we couldn't possibly make my sister go with a pinafore (we don't have one here anyway) she had to go with the newly bought ones. luckily we didn't look like aliens because some chuugakkou uniforms were similar.. when we arrived at the main gate a white man came to us, "hello, would you like to learn English at GEOS?"

wanted to say "that's very kind of you sir but no thanks," but we felt bad about it.

it began with the registration session - queued according to groups (there were 8 groups, divided according to the student's registration number), handed up forms and paid for PTA, in return we received a bag of books and another envelope with forms. then we were asked to sit according to groups.

next, a speech by the head of discipline, followed by a few others from the school administration team. almost fell asleep while the adults were talking about "how students and parents should behave" on the stage. i knew it was something about mobile phone problems and students' attitude towards learning (no "mendokusai", no degrading people and oneself, no negative expressions..). also about uniforms - girls must have their skirt length right on the knee-level (which doesn't looks cool but i suppose that's the proper and decent way).

to our horror (ok not really..) every student was given the same amount of assignments to be completed before the new semester - 2 English, 1 Math and 1 Japanese workbooks to be done and handed in on the respective first lessons. for English and Japanese, there will be placement tests to grade their language proficiency. all students (there're about 320 of them) will take the same syllabus in their 1st year, and they will be grouped into more specialised classes in their 2nd year (normal science, normal arts, international science and international arts.. or something like that). the majority will proceed to normal classes and only 25% of them will be allocated to the international classes, which place more importance in English and the curriculum is slightly different.

at the end of the speech session the students were told to put away their own (and their parents') chairs to proceed with the purchase of sports wear and shoes. among the little high school kids, i alone stood out because i had to carry 4 chairs (and i wasn't even a student from that school) - my own chair, the chair beside me which was empty, my mom's and sister's, because my mom was kiasu and she wants to be the first few to order the sports attire..

apart from buying sports wear, we also bought textbooks. they were far cheaper than my reference books, but they added to the total weight of heavy goods which we received on that day. so we decided to buy the dictionaries on another day, and walked back to Tsukuba station.

met up with Adeline for afternoon "tea" (it was ginger ale for me, actually) and we gossiped again. my mom even practiced the "china-man custom" by telling me to "learn from Adeline". ugh.. mothers..

no pictures for the orientation, but probably will take some during nyuugakushiki.

*****

1) chuugakkou - juinor high school
2) mendokusai = it's annoying/tedious
3) nyuugakushiki - school entrance ceremony