Jes Visits! - Jeff's Party

One of my teachers is a rather famous guy in this area and is a published (he has, like 13 books) researcher of intercultural communication. He also teaches English to a lot of people, and he hosts parties at various times to help give his students chance to interact with each other and to practice the languages that they're studying. To aid this end, he used a lottery to figure out seating, which made sure everybody was nice and mixed. Jes was at the center table of three and I was at the South table, where the population varied widely. Hidemi, at left, was one of the people at my table.
[Edit: I guess I forgot to mention that he has a couple of television shows and he teaches at his own English school. To quote Anchorman: He's "kind of a big deal".]

I took some pictures, as I am wont to do, though almost all of them came out a little blurry. Once I pulled out my flash, there were no problems, but before that the light level was too low even for my fast lens to get sharp pictures.

Stupid physics, stupid optical levers, stupid 50mm.

Anyway, as long as you look at them really small, it's not so easy to see the blurriness, so here's what I've got. It's mostly me and Jes, but she's cute and my parents always want pictures of me, and Jose's apparently a photographer. He was drooling over my camera, in any case, which is a little weird - it's kind of backwards - for me.

First up is a picture of Jes with Jose, who everyone calls "Josie", using the girls' name instead of the Spanish pronunciation. I think this is weird, but maybe that's his actual name. Who knows.


At far left is me setting up my tripod. I like this picture, because I'm decently far enough away that you can't see how doom I look.
The next picture I'm not so happy about, but I think it would look pretty good if I weren't so tired. It was nearly 1AM at that point, though, and we had gotten up around 7AM to take Jes to church.

I think this may be the first picture on the blog of me in my blue shirt, which is one of my favorites. It's pretty much my favorite color, though it looks a little different in these pictures.

At right is Jes being cute. That's really all that needs to be said. I wish that I could say I took this picture, but I think Jose took it.

Moving on.

We did a gift exchange that was... weird. Everybody brought a ~$10 present and then we sang a song and passed it around. I got a nifty blankety thing.

No real idea what's going on at left. Maybe it was when he was saying how she had prepared all the food. I remember that she was the one who did it, and apparently on really short notice, but I dunno if this was when he said that. The food was good, by the way. Speaking of food, this is one of the sweets that was brought out, along with about two hundred creampuffs and a huge box of very, very good mikan, which are known as satsuma oranges in English, I think.

This was the group of people who stayed until fairly late. Remember I was setting up that tripod earlier? I've got the remote in my right hand in this picture. I used the two-second timer to hide it. From left to right: Jeff, guy whose name I don't know, David, Hidemi, Jose, me (Will!), and the kitten (Jes).

To finish the night off, Jeff played his Japanese flute for us. Calling it a "Japanese flute" really doesn't do it justice, but I don't remember the special name it has. It's got a special name because it's longer than the normal flute, known as a shakuhachi.

It was interesting, though a little slower-paced than I was expecting. I was excited to hear him play it and Jes really enjoyed it as well, apparently, because she got to learn about new musical stuff.