Day 2 - In Lectures

I have decided I will learn 3 new Japanese words or phrases each day while I am here - I'm not sure if I will be able to keep up but I will try. This morning I learnt 'good morning' and I exchanged this with one of the Japanese assistants on the course for the equivalent in Maori. I gave him 'ata marie' which he liked because it sounds a lot like 'be warm' in Japanese.

Today was a full day of lectures in at the centre, it was good and interesting, not too easy/not too hard, so I am pleased about that. There are 15 participants on this training course, all from different countries, many of whom are traveling abroad for the first time. While we are getting our mouths around all the different names we all often refer to each other in the beauty-pageant approved format, which is what I will use for blogging purposes. The line up includes (in alphabetical order of country, which is how we are ordered here):

Mr Cambodia
Mr China
Miss Indonesia
Mr Iran
Mr Lao
Miss Myanmar
Miss Nepal
Miss New Zealand (yep! eat your heart out Lana...)
Mr Pakistan
Mr Papua New Guinea
Miss Philippines
Miss Samoa
Miss Sri Lanka
Mr Thailand
and Mr Vietnam

please note there is only one person I can talk about the rugby world cup with, I need to find a place to see the games...