Stranger in a Strange Land
When Sofie was a freshman in high school, she wasn’t doing very well, nearly failing every class and not coming home on time and so forth. Her mom decided to send Sofie off to ‘visit’ her parents, who had retired back to Japan. She thought that perhaps a stricter society, where Sofie was only barely fluent in the language (since she also shirked her Japanese lessons at home in Boston), would shock her into working a little harder. Sofie attended the first year of high school (which is 15-16, sophomore year in the U.S.) in Japan. Well, most of the year.
While she was in Japan, Sofie…
- Became fluent in spoken Japanese
- Improved her knowledge of kanji and kana enough that she didn’t actually outright fail any of her classes
- Did other students’ English homework for money
- Did all of her grandparents’ chores each day, and baked them chocolate chip cookies
- Sang “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” on television
- Skyped with Nikola every day
- Bought new clothes, wore them once, and sold them on U.S. e-bay for loads of money
- Met Chef and Francis from Cooking with Dog
- Touched a monkey at a hot spring
- Folded one-thousand paper airplanes, mostly out of her uncompleted homework
The last straw was when Sofie showed up to school in an altered version of the official uniform. She got kicked out, and her mother relented and allowed her to return home. Her grandparents often call her and try to convince her to come back, but her continually poor grades are a mark against her.
Bonus! Two pictures of Claire I forgot to post here ;)
