A Week and a Half of News

Its high time for a much delayed blog entry! So much has happened over the past week and a half that I doubt I can sum it all up as well as I’d like so I’ll do my best to put down the main points. It’ll saves ya’ll the trouble of sifting through my endless thought processes anyway!

So…to begin, I did end up going to St. Louis in the end! My original plan was to can the trip due to medical issues but luckily everything went smoothly and I was able to go. I have to say that if I were forced to sum up St. Louis into one word, without a doubt it would be GREEN. Everything is green! And not just tree green, but verging on neon green! It hit home that Toronto really is pretty far up north since I have forgotten what summer green looks like. Anyway, in short, it was a gorgeous city in terms of aesthetics and cleanliness and I would go back in an instant just for the overwhelming greenness. :P

My trip was planned so I could visit my penpal of six years, Ayumi, before she heads back to Japan. Some of the things I had the chance to see were her university, her apartment, the favourite hang out (a main street) for students, the famous St. Louis arch, and the Mississippi River. As for some of the things we did, we went to karaoke, attended a JASA barbeque, ate at various restaurants, and explored the area near to Ayumi’s apartment. I also met Ayumi’s boyfriend Josh who needs special mention here for all of the driving he did for us around St. Louis! If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t have been able to see squat, so thank you!

Ayumi’s university is called Webster University, and it is quite small in scale compared to UWO. Nevertheless, the campus was beautiful and well-kept, and had an inviting ambiance exuding from each and every room. Most of the walls and staircases were made of deep brown wood, and situated at the entrance to the university was a grand chapel used not only for services but also for presentations and movie shows. In contrast to my college, most of the floors were fully carpeted giving the impression that the university is actually a converted old house rather than an institution. It was very cosy and I must admit, I felt a twinge of jealousy that I had not chosen this university instead!

The Arch is a famous landmark in St. Louis – pretty much the equivalent in hype to Toronto’s CN Tower I guess. We had a massive three hour wait to get to the top of the arch, and we were only up there for about 10 minutes (the summit was literally a cubby hole packed with tons of tourists). Even so, I enjoyed killing time with Ayumi and Josh by walking around the museum of American History which was attached to the underground part of the arch, and the gift shop (I swear, all of the same merchandise can be found at the CN tower with the only difference being the logos!). By and large, it was a pretty worthwhile experience in my opinion!

The final event I want to mention is our outing to a Japanese restaurant called Seki’s. Everything would have been beautiful if it had not have been for one thing: the waitress from hell! She was a short, hunched over Japanese woman with a deeply wrinkled face that looked like it had been intermittently scrunched up into a little, sour ball and stretched out again, and an awkward shuffle that made her resemble a troll. She griped her questions, and gave you a cold hard stare if you made even the smallest request (i.e. can we get separate bills?). The three of us figured that the only way this woman could have been hired was if she were the owner’s mother because we had never seen customer service as bad as that. Even more amusing was the fact that her hatred seemed to be completely directed at our table (bad karma perhaps?). It seems her bad attitude can be turned on and off because when a rather hefty Afro American couple dressed in gansta get-up swaggered into the restaurant to use the washroom, she greeted them in the following way:

Old Woman: Hey, what’s up!
Couple: Not too much, how you doin’?
Old Woman: I haven’t see ya’ll in ages.
*happy laughter ensues*

All of our mouths dropped open as if someone had pulled a string on our jaws. It was as if they were old chums! Anyway, although it was the WORST service I have ever had and Ayumi and I left the restaurant with a churning nervousness in our stomachs, it was also the most hilarious event of the entire trip and ironically brought us all together by ridding us of any awkwardness we might have felt beforehand. From now on, I think Ayumi and Josh will be selecting tables whenever they go to Seki!

One more thing I’d like to mention is the reality of the Bible Belt. There were three events that really stood out as being different from so-called Canadian bible thumping. First, when we were driving downtown one day, we were stopped at the traffic lights by two gospel Christians holding out large buckets and encouraging people to drop in all of their spare change to support their church. The second event was when we were walking through campus. An older gentleman was standing at the crossroads holding a handful of tiny bibles and giving them out to people for free. Finally, at the airport before returning home, a lady with a strong southern accent came on the PA system to give a very important announcement. I thought that it would probably be a warning not to leave your bags unattended but rather, it was an advertisement to attend the 12:00 mass being held at the airport chapel. This announcement went on longer than any of the security announcements you generally encounter at an airport. Now this is only St. Louis, Missouri, a location which is often not even considered a part of the Bible Belt. I am not saying that it is necessarily bad, but it was a bit of culture shock I did not expect and I was really able see how dislike for other religions could spread in a mono-faith society.

So that is pretty much St. Louis in a nut shell! I was very happy to see Ayumi again and I think our friendship has gotten even deeper because we had the chance to talk one on one about so many things. Although we have met five times in total, we never really talked because we were either guiding each other around our hometowns, or spending time with lots of other people! I am really looking forward to seeing her again when I go to Japan!

Speaking of Japan, all of my application forms have been sent to my college meaning that all I have to do is get my medical form filled out, and get my Visa!! Everything is drawing near, though it doesn’t really feel like it. I really hope that I can get a flight with the other exchange students since the 12 hour flight is worse than working the assembly line….

….bringing me to my next topic! As I mentioned in my last post, I have started a job at a recycling factory. This factory takes in all of the recycled products from all over our region and gradually filters it down until everything is put into its proper place. My job is to sort cardboard from garbage and pop cans on a fast paced assembly line for 8 hours day. I know, I know, it sounds like mind numbing hell on earth but actually, it is much better than I expected! The first two days were, in fact, hell because my arms and legs weren’t used to the constant moving around and throwing of heavy objects into chutes, nor were my feet used to the steel toed boots I have to wear on the job, but this feeling has now worn off and I pass the time with burned CDs I make every night before my job starts, and jolly joking around with my coworkers. Though it is probably of little surprise, most of my coworkers are older, uneducated men who have either been hit hard by life, or find the simple life much easier to deal with than going out and getting a job at a company. I was warned by the agency that on my first day I would encounter a group of big, burly men hanging out in front of the building smoking and to beware (I was a little bit unnerved!), but to my surprise, they are all teddy bears! They are incredibly nice to me and are much more amicable than any of the puffed up academe that I have met at my university. I feel like I can be myself around them because they do not judge me from my background – what matters is that we are all in the job together and that we work as a team. I was really impressed by their cooperative attitude because it is so rarely observable in the academic world. (I find the academic world tends to believe in the motto “fend for oneself and leave everyone else in the dust” though not everyone is like that…) For now, my plan is to continue at the plant as long as my body can take the constant activity and monotonous daily routines…but for $80 a day, I’ll pretty much do anything!

To iu wake de (that's kinda like "so anyway" in Japanese...I was tired of saying anyway, hehe)…that is pretty much my week and a half! I hope you enjoyed it and didn’t fall asleep half way through! :P

Ayumi: Thank you a million times for the awesome weekend! I honestly haven’t had such a good time in a loooong while. Loved watching you-know-who smoke the orange stogies and drinking cheap Jamaican beer…haha…we should definitely go to an Izakaya in Japan and get ourselves pissed so I can finally use my “fluent” Japanese… :P :P Have a safe trip back!