VCEgags - The Quiet American - 'Phuong'

Hello to my fellow jellyfish,

It has been a while. 

Don't mind me. I'm just casually.. updating every 3 months 6 months. (n˘v˘•)¬

As you all know, I am currently in my last year of high school. 

YES, I am slugging through this hell called the 'VCE'. It's the Victorian state(a lovely state in Australia for those of you who are geographically challenged, don't worry, me too) equivalent of SATs (slash whatever final high school testing they do in your part of the globe). 

So, onto my main point.

As a part of my English course, I am studying 'The Quiet American' written by the erudite Graham Greene.

Being the typical ass I am, I like to laugh at people to myself every time I hear the name 'Phuong' pronounced. It's my favourite pastime. Nah, I kid, I kid. 

No, seriously. 

I'm sitting there in class and I just watch as the teacher struggles to pronounce her name, stuttering every time she has to mention it. 

"FU-ONG... fu-wong...fuUUU-ONG...ah let's just call her Vietnam seeing as she's a symbol of the country" says my teacher.

"Well.. fu-ong doesn't seem like she has a personality" - student #06

"ARGH. FU-WONG IS SO ANNOYING" - student #17

The list goes on.

I guess the proper pronunciation is along the lines of 'feeeeerng'. DRAG OUT THAT ER SOUND ~(˘▾˘~)

Here's a demo I found:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ0ELQA3q7g

Hope you guys learnt something today. Remember the 'er' ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ

Japanese Exchange - The First Host Sister

Exchange is interesting. Haha, my host families are absolutely wonderful. They're so loving, kind and understanding, it's too bad that my host sisters are slightly weird....

My first host sister's introduction was somewhat disappointing. There were so many sentences yet the only thing she actually wrote about was the fact that she lived close to the school.
It sorta went down like this: (Note: this is all in Japanese)
1. My name is __________________.
2. I live close to the school.
3. It takes 10 minutes to school by foot.
4. Out of my class, I live the closest to school.
5. You don't need to wake up early because I live close to the school.
6. Because I am not a morning person, it is good that I live close to the school.

Hah. Gee, thanks bro. Nice to know you live close to the school. Any hobbies? Anything?
It's alright though, I did end up finding out her hobbies, though I'm not too sure if it was better for me to find out her hobbies or not. You see, she is a HUGE fan of the Japanese baseball team, Giants. When I say huge, I mean sickeningly HUGE. I was forced to watch the baseball channel for 4 hours at a time because she wouldn't let go of the remote control and it turned out the ONLY channel she had was the baseball channel. I tried to busy myself by looking through her books for Japanese phrases to learn, but it was too hard to concentrate. That T.V. is damn loud. I asked her to lower the volume but even the lowest volume was loud -_-

Well at least I know the names of all the players in the Giants baseball team....

Oh gosh. Purikura. You guys can be the judge of how alien I look in my purikura picture....
I'll post my pictures when I get back to Australia. Right now, my second host sister's laptop isn't liking me too much :<