Orientation Part 2

First official day of Fulbright Orientation. Woke up at 6:30 AM (have not done this....in quite a while...hate it). The orientation itself was pretty boring, mostly because I had already heard about most of the stuff. Lots of move in stuff that I already completed. In the afternoon, the other fellows went to the bank to cash their first check. Everyone was nervous holding over $5000 in cash on them, haha. I previously had the same experience, only I had over $7000 (3 more weeks pay).

At night, we had a dinner party, with tons of former Fulbrighters and sponsors, at the American Deputy Chief of Mission's house. It was a NICE house, probably worth millions actually. It was huge, lavishly furnished, and in the center of Tokyo. Pretty nice place and the American Ambassador was there as well. I was planning to take a picture with him, but I was unable to personally meet him. I had though about taking a picture with him with a stuffed Cecil as well, but I did not have the guts in the end. Reason for stuffed Cecil, I was planning to take pictures of Cecil all around Japan (inspired by Evan). Of course, I have not been very good at it, but hopefully he/she? will visit some places this year.

Anyway, my advisor was there with his wife and I was stuck with them the whole time. Pros: practiced by (horrible) Japanese all night and got to know them better. Cons: was not able to meet other people and network (which might be good? considering how I fear social networking) and could not speak English all night (others conversed mostly in English). Interesting enough, of the two people I did meet, one was a good friend of Professor Dru Gladney (who I worked for at Pomona) and one was a prof who does a lot of sports TV work (covered 7 Olympics for NBC or something) and documentary stuff. I am wondering about the protocol of contacting these people for information about future jobs. It seems a bit weird to just send them an email asking for help considering all the contact we have is a conversation at a dinner party. Hmmmm....

Well, afterward, most of us went for some karaoke. Not exactly my thing but I decided to stay in order to be sociable. I still can't sing and know no Japanese songs. I realized that I am most comfortable singing Chinese songs since I only Karaoke in Taiwan (and my knowledge of English songs is quite limited). We get to sleep in an extra hour tomorrow, so that is a plus.