Lectures and Locks

    Today I am going to talk about locks. I sometimes have trouble unlocking doors, 'cause I can't figure out which way the key is supposed to turn. Dad (and others) have told me the trusty saying, "Righty tighty, Lefty loosey." (Right to lock and left to unlock.) I repeat this to myself before I start to un/lock a door, but then the key doesn't want to turn the proper way, and I get confused, and I usually end up banging on the door and frantically turning the handle and key in every possible combination.

    Well, I now have an understandable reason to not know which way to turn the key or the lock. Just as the Japanese drive on the left side of the road, their locks lock to the left and unlock to the right. At least the ones to our rooms do; I guess I can't speak for all Japanese locks, as I haven't un/locked many doors here in Japan. Anyway, I have to turn the key to the right to unlock the door to my room. But, to make this even more confusing, (Because why should this everyday function be easy?) hen I'm inside the room, or in the toilet, I turn the lock-knob-thing to the right to lock the door and to the left to unlock it. Which sort of makes sense, because turning to the left on one side of the door put the knob to the right on the other side. But the point of the story is this: Locks are confusing, and now I have a legitimate reason to be unable to proper un/lock a door on the first try.

    Actual orientation started today, which means we spent the whole day in a lecture hall, listening to people talk. The first session was a repeat of Monday's welcome and guide to the schedule. The next one was an intro of the faculty, which was interesting. It was also a bit odd for me, because there are many more male professors here. I guess it's because I've been in the Hollins bubble. Hollins has male professor, just not a huge amount of them, and I haven't taken classes with many of them. There was a meet the faculty period, where you could go and talk to the teachers about their classes. I went and met my assigned academic advisor, mostly to find out what the academic advisor is supposed to do. He's also teaching one of the classes I signed up for: Ethics: East and West. He was nice, and said that he was there if I had any questions about anything, but specifically if I had any problems with my homestay or classes. He sounded excited that I wanted to take his class. His one warning amused me greatly. He warned me that there would be a lot of reading for the class. Oh no! Me? Reading? However shall I survive?! I won't even have the distraction of shelves of personal books to read this semester, so I think I can handle it. Although, now that I've said that, there will probably be hundreds of pages of reading a night!

    After the faculty meeting, there was a long meeting about safety issues. A large part of this meeting was spent discussing the laws about owning and riding bicycles in Japan. Let me just say that I no longer have any desire to EVER ride a bike while I'm here. Seriously, they do not seem worth the hassle. I'm hoping my homestay is either close enough to walk to the school or far enough away that I need to take bus or train.

    TOMORROW I FIND OUT MY HOMESTAY INFORMATION!!!!!! I'm SUPER excited!!! I still won't meet them until this weekend, but I will at least know how many of them are in the family and hopefully where they live!


And now I must leave you and commence my excited flailing.