Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Dinner with an ex-pat

It's 5am, and I've been awake for an hour (hoo-ray for jet lag). While the other girls are still trying to recapture that elusive full-night of sleep (we were ALL awake at 4am), I finally decided to get up and take advantage of a few minutes of quiet writing time. Oh, wait--now Samia is following my lead. I'm laying down in the hotel room entryway and she took her laptop to the bathtub, as we both try to let Rachael get enough sleep for all of us. :)

Last night, we had dinner at an uber-trendy pub with an American ex-pat who is a friend-of-a-friend of Samia's. I was completely engrossed in her stories, as she is almost exactly the type of free spirit-hippie that I desperately wish I could be! Oh--if only I wasn't so inherently type-A! This girl came to Japan after college, thinking that she would just teach English for a year (since she was uncertain what else to do with her liberal arts degree & two years of Japanese language/history classes). Well, seven years later, she's still here and is working for a local city government developing English curricula for elementary schools. And...of course she is also a professional BELLY DANCER on the side. :) I couldn't get enough of her stories about her crazy Australian belly dance instructor, her crazy Japanese tattoo artist ex-boyfriend, and her street-performer friend's run-in with the Japanese mafia. She also effortlessly communicated with the locals in near-perfect Japanese. I'm pretty sure that my mouth was gaped open in awe the entire evening. Like me, she had grown up in a normal middle-class family in the midwest...how did her life take such a crazier turn than mine? As we were saying goodbye at the local subway station, I wanted to shout, "Teach me your ways, o wise one!!!" But of course, my conservative self won out once again, and I simply said, "It was so nice to meet you."

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