An email sent from April to her mom regarding lots of stuff………
From: Gary Ploski 1/9/98 21:13
Subject: a weird day…good but strange
To: elhct@aol.com
Yes that is right…Maybe weird isn’t the word I would use. Let me start off by telling you that I am very happy with my GPA. 3.0!!!! That is two in a row. Anyway. Today Gary and I went into City Hall and sat there for a little while. I met the woman he works with, Liz.
So, the weird part is, ever since I have arrived here I have been given compliments right and left. I feel like I am kind if on show here. Everyone wants to meet me and I have to smile pretty and be extremely attentive. That is not bad, I can handle that…but it does get tiresome. The thing that weirds me out is the outspokeness of the men and women. I would never dream of saying something like this..” oooohhhh…Gary, she is very beautiful, you are very lucky, very cute, very beautiful, you April are very beautiful.” And then blantly stare. Everywhere I go I get stared at. Part of that is the fact that I am a foreigner in a part of Japan that does not get many foreigners.
When we went to Nippori, where Hard Rock is, there are a bunch of foreigners..it is the party place of Tokyo. It was weird being around that many westerners again. But back to the problem with compliments. I do not take them well and do not know what to do or say..I get all fidgety and turn red. I guess there are worse things to be fidgety about though.
After we went to cityhall we went to one of the schools. This is the one which that I will be going to with Gary. We will be going to school for three days. I met the three english teachers that Gary works with. They were all very nice and have decent english. There was one, Mr. Uto, he is a bit weird. But all the students are excpetionally excited to meet me, and i guess I am suppose to actaully answer questions and stuff. I do not think that I like being put in the spot light.
I told you this morning that we had a foot of snow here. You wanna know the funny thing, they put chains on the tires. I guess because they get snow so little that all the drivers get nervous and put chains on. Mom- THERE ARE NO HILLS! the roads for the most part are flat. Gary and I were laughing so hard that we had to take pictures of a car with chains. When I say cars, we are not talking about little light cars, we are talking 4 wheel drives land cruisers.
The other thing that made me crack up was on our way to city hall we say a couple of people trying to hose away the snow. Yup, they were out there with hoses, spraying down the snow. They are going to be surprised when they get home from work and can ice skate infront of their houses.
The other things that we did was to go visit this guy Marko. He is an older man who is in a nursing home. Apparently he likes to know who the AET’s in the area are. He keeps in touch with them. So we went to see him. He gave me a box of chocolates. He just called again to tell us thank you for coming to see him. He took an entire roll of film of me and Gary and of the three of us and his friend. I don’t mind going to see people in nusring homes, but it is the smell that gets me.
Right now I just finished cooking and cleaning up. Yes that is right we are playing house. I am turning into quite the hostess. I made an entire dinner, and I did the dishes. We have to do the dishes after every meal because we only have four place settings. Umm…what else can I tell you? A couple things come to mind.
The night at Jopolis. It is like a huge arcade. But tis acrade is super high tech. They have three full size cars that you do virtual racing in. Dad would love this game. You get in this car that is ona hydrolic system. The car responds to what you do. It is just like a plane simluator. This place also had regular arcade games and this one where you get on an plastic horse and race the person next to you. You can choose the kind of horse that you want. Like a sprinter, or a stayer or a horse that comes up from behind. Gary beat me.
They had four way air hockey. That was a ton of fun. The nice thing about this place, Japan, is that I don’t get carded anywhere. I have turned into a beer snob. I can’t wait to tell Aurthur about that. He will be proud.
Lets see what else. We went to this place, Asakusa and Ueno, it was kind of like NY city. I had an attack. It was very scary and strange. I felt so bad. Remember that time we were in the city when I was really young and I got very claustrophbic. It was like that but I was much worse. Part of it was I was hungry and tired, but I ended up in tears. I had to come back to the apartement. It was like the noise was overwhemlming, all the poeple…I couldn’t focus on anything, there were too many sounds, I felt like I had gone crazy and that made me really upset. So I ended up outside the train station in tears grasping onto pour Gary who didn’t have a clue what was going on.
The other thing that I wanted to tell you was Gary and I have been talking alot about what is going to happen next year. I think that he is going to come home next year. He said that if he could come home with me he would…but obviously that is not going to happen. I think I am going
to stay in school and finish, and he is going to work in the area for the remaining time that i am in school and then we might move away. Of course this is all speculative, and we will talk some more, but as of right now, that is how it stands.
Joanie sent the Highlander tapes so we are going to watch those for the night. Kaz is here for the weekend. He doing card tricks right now. I think he should be a Vegas dealer. Well I have bored you enough…more later. have a good day guys….loffe rille
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GARY PLOSKI *dis male has’nt ben prof*
ESUTO-SAWA 102 *red their May b ear or’s.*
3-2-47 HON-CHO (a.c.)milk
ASAKA-SHI, SAITAMA gotta love it
351 JAPAN
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