Love D.C.

"Find the tiny little man in this picture" by OLYMPUS E-410



I'm gonna write about a place where I used to live, very very freely. It's about Virginia/ DC.

I have lived there for just three months and originally I was not supposed to move out California. The reason why I decided to put myself in another state was because I wanted to see the real America with my eyes for real. Honestly, it didn't matter where it was.
First of all, my English teacher in California told me one day, "Your English could be perfect if you move to a smaller town with lesser Japanese people and stay there only six months." Maybe he said that for just encouraging me to study harder, but I took that seriously and started thinking about it all the time. But at the same time, I have no confidence to be out of such a great Japanese friendly city of Los Angeles, so that I asked my agent to find out a lesser-Japanese ESL near Los Angeles...you know it's a kind of impossible.

A few days later, I got two replies from them. One said they would be looking for schools that I asked, and the other was suggested me to move to Virginia. I had already told them that I didn't have enough money to start a whole new life in somewhere else, so moving far was not an idea which I needed. But my very supportive counselor dared to say that I should move out California if I really wanted to improve not just my English but also my skill on living in a foreign country by myself. There were some reliable reasons for me to chose Virginia to stay. Because of the lower living expense, because of the reasonable tuition with high leveled education, because of the free museums and stuff, and because of the almost non-population of Japanese in spite of being a big state next to the Capital.

Sure it did sound great ...but it was way too farther than my expectation. Six hours flying and three hours difference in the same country!? "Where the hell is Virginia?" that what I though first, even though I was in " the hell" just one month after that. Then, I did realize there was a weather, possibilities of not being sunny, on this globe. It was raining on my first Monday , and I already thrown my unused umbrella away when I left a dorm in LA, a.k.a. the sunniest place in the USA.... However, instead of the "weather," all colors in East were so lovely to me. Look at the picture above. That's exactly what you can see in fall in DC. I'm sure I'll go there and see those colors again.

Unfortunately, I could stay in the East for only three months, because of my financial crisis and some other issues...I don't know. The most important thing is, was my English improved? What do you think? You know what, as a matter of fact, I was struggling at the new school in DC. Although I took the highest scores in my former school in LA sometimes, it was really hard for me to catch up with classes and I barely understood what they were talking about. All my classmates seemed to be familiar with using many spoken English which I'd never used before. Most of them were already decided to stay America forever and could speak English like native speakers (of course they just sounded like that to me). What I learned at school in DC was not just English knowledge, but how to used it properly and enjoy complicated conversations with people from whole other countries. On the top of them, I learned how to watch and how to enjoy the American TV shows because my first class used these DVDs as textbook. I can say, those TV programs were my best teachers of spoken English.

So, long story short, I moved to Virginia to watch TV shows all the time in order to train my English brain.
Anyhow, moving to Virginia and staying around DC have changed my life. I've got "my life" over there. Seen many stuff which I'd never expected to. Met a best friend who can understand me form my deepest. Well, now I'm really really worrying...which state, California or Virginia, I should be back after I earn enough money to make my dream of returning to America true? Come on, seriously...