05.24.05
Alumni Lunch - dog and pony show
Since before Golden Week, the Miyabi club has been preparing for this luncheon with the alumni group of the University of the Sacred Heart, known as JASH. (I think it stands for Japan Alumni of the Sacred Heart.) The JASH members prepare lunch, and we have a meet and greet. All foreign exchange students were required to go.
Since it falls in the midst of our presentations, I’ve started to think of this time as the dog and pony show. Cynical, I know, but everyone is stressed about their presentations. Also, the Miyabi Club decided to have us perform a song to symbolize our unity.
Apparently, “If You’re Happy and You Know It” is present in many, many countries in their native tongues, with an occasional change of melody. We practiced it in Japanese, English, Korean, Chinese, Czech, and Thai. Czech was hard, but Thai was even harder. I’m sure we butchered it in Thai, not that the JASH members could probably tell.
The song is cute, although aimed at a much younger audience. But with impending presentations, our cuteness tolerance level was lower than usual, so mostly we felt silly. Ang skipped a couple of rehearsals, and Lenka discussed not attending. In the end we were all present. I decided to be a “good dog” and dress up, but most of the other three month students did not.
The JASH ladies prepared pot luck, so some of the dishes were tasty and interesting, and others were not. Most of the dishes were Japanese cuisine, but some were of other cuisines, including Chinese and French.
In addition to coffee and soda, there was also a matcha station. Matcha is the powdered green tea used in tea ceremonies. There was a little of that formality, but not very much. They even let us make our own cups of matcha if we wanted to. And they had the appropriate sweets for the tea ceremony, separate from the dessert station.
So even if I felt dumb, it was a good thing to do. I did reasonable amounts of mingling and had a good time. The ladies sent us home with goodies, but I took very few, since I usually eat at the cafeteria, and others don’t.
