Day 14 TUJ

 

    Today we had class in the morning then we had back off to Temple University to get a tour and meet the dean of the school. It took us about 35 mins to get there and when we got off the train, we had to do a little bit of walking while walking the sun decided to make an appearance which made the walk seem longer than the first time we came. When we walked in Andrew was waiting at the door for us and gave us a quick run-down of what we were about to. The plan was to do a quick tour because the campus isn’t that big then go back down to the classroom where Dean Wilson will talk to us, and we will eat. While walking around the campus you could tell that it was newly built because everything looked basically brand new. The average size classroom at TUJ is about 20 which is not bad and is honestly the perfect size for a classroom. For lunch they gave us a bento box and water, the bento box was all right not really good to me but there was some kind of meat that was in there that I ate that was pretty good, oh, and the rice lol. Once it looked like everyone was about done Dean Wilson came down and introduced himself and gave background on himself. He told us that is originally from the Rocky Mountains and first came to Japan on a missionary trip with his church but he was terrified to go because he was afraid that he wasn't going to be able to speak to other people so they can figure out what he needed and then would just be trapped of here with no one. Well as you can tell he got over that and went on with life because he now lives here with his wife and kids and is the Dean of TUJ. After he introduced himself, he went on to talk about international commination and how every place has different ways of communicating. One thing that stuck with me that he said was “You may understand the words but not the context.” Meaning that just because you know what people are saying doesn’t mean that you fully understand because there are more things that go into understanding people like body language in some cultures, they don’t say the word “no”, they will keep telling you things like they will think about it or that maybe hard to do, anything but no. Once he was done speaking we all took a picture together and then headed back to the room.