To my surprise the test was not so difficult. Well, of course it was difficult, but not to the extent I had expected. But I still had to expect the worst. But then I guess anything else would be unlike me. I am still in chock from my unbelievably good score (meaning best in the class) at the last test. I first thought it must be the other Erik (who studied in the same class before and during last year´s Sapporo studies, but not after) that they meant, even though I of course knew he wasn´t. Anyway, waiting for the results was a real pain. When we finally got our tests back I could finally breathe out. Counting all four tests (reading comprehension, grammar, words/kanji, listening comprehension) I scored 74.5% of the points. Although I am happy I passed I cannot be pleased with a score under 80%. 

In the evening after the test I went with Kyeong to a movie festival called American Short Shorts. Miki, a friend since last year, called me the evening before and invited me since she worked there as a volonteer. I had no idea what it was but I figured that no matter if it was fun or not it would be a fun experience. It was pretty crowded there and after waiting in the lobby for a while, waching some weird video with different people saying "American shooto shooto", we were let into the salon. Some films were just annoying, like the one with a psychopath walking door to door removing people´s organs while having discussions with himself (great acting by the man who played the psychopath but the story was just too long and irritating). But most films were good and some were great. The one that got most laughs was without doubt one with a man with a moustasche in tights who sang classic melodies with own lyrics, mostly concerning sex and sexuality and using as foul language as possible. Another one that recieved laughs, but only at two points was a film about an obnoxious musician whose car breaks down on a desert road. After a while a spaceship comes down playing and a whacky version of the encounter scene at the ending of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. First he answers to the tones from the ship with his harmonica, then he brings out a synthesizer and starts jamming. After communicating with him for a while the ship then suddenly shoots a laser beam leaving only his smoking boots and synthesizer, before taking off into the sky. There were two films that really stood out though - Tim Burton´s early puppet animation Vincent and the japanese film Ohagi. Vincent is a short animated film Burton worked on when he worked at Disney´s studio, but they thought it to be too bizarre to show for the public. I had heard about it earlier but I never thought I´d get a chance to actually see it. It is about a kid named Vincent, who wishes more than anything else to be the horror actor Vincent Price. The animation style is similar to that in his later film The Nightmare Before Christmas and the story is told as a poem actually read by Vicent Price himself. 

Before class each day I usually draw a picture representing the way I feel at that time. Other times I just draw a picture with no meaning whatsoever. Anyway, I thought I´d share some of them with you here. 

The first weeks I had no bike so I had to walk to school. It takes about 30 minutes.	Sometimes I just want to mail myself to Emma.	A lot of times I have been feeling like this at class. The chimney idea was taken from a picture by the cartoonist Franquin.
I´ll let this one speak for itself...	The japanese letters in my glasses reads nemui and means sleepy.	It may be difficult to make out but the stuff under my smiling face are the things in the package from Sweden...
Another one of those days...	Where I wanted to be...	Um... this is one of those meaningless ones.
A bird pilot...	...in his cardoard plane.	I fixed it up a bit in Photoshop just for fun.
Yet another of those days... and another.

Well, I don´t always feel wasted at class, but I don´t usually draw myself unless I feel better or worse than normal.

After this tiresome deal with the test there was something great waiting just around the corner. You see, the following weekend I was to go to the yearly Tokai school festival and meet all my friends from last year...