What world?

Hmm, too bad that I am teaching clases today because otherwise I could have gone out in the searing heat and picked peaches with the year 2s! What a shame.

Last night some bloke came to my door and said that he works in a futon business near my house and just wanted to say hello. I was like, "Ok." and stood there looking at him and he thought I didn't understand what he was saying and got all embarrassed and tried to say it again but slower. It was one of those weird situations where I thought I knew what he was saying, but I didn't understand what he meant by it. What was I supposed to say after he said that? "Hello to you to!" and then what? Invite him in for a cuppa? In the end he just went away and I went back to eating my dinner.

On Monday at our meeting one of the CIRs told me that a girl from New Zealand who lives in this area teaching at a middle school was once asked if there were clouds in her country. She was looking upat the sky at the train station and some woman sidled up and said, "Do you have those where you come from?" with a smug Japan-has-special-stuff face no doubt, "What, clouds?"

I reckon clouds are pretty much a world-wide phenomenon and if you get to the age where strangers look at you and judge you to be a grandma without knowing this fact then shame on you. Perhaps if she was a grandma from some isolated desert tribe I might make an exception, but a woman who is living in one of the richest developed countries in the world has no excuses, she probably has 5 wide-screen televisions in her house. I was thinking of this because just about every second day a kid will ask me if we have TV in Australia. I must give the Japanese this, they are extremely persistant in their ignorance of the outside world!