Abroad

After the meeting with Howard Sensei was over, the seven American students all traipsed out of the dorm together. They threw an 'ittekimasu' over their shoulder to tell Mr. Muraki that they were leaving.

The university was small. It only took five to seven minutes to walk across campus. There was some green space on campus, but nothing like the amount of green space back at their college in America. It was a Saturday so there were no students on campus, except some of the sports players down on the fields.

The American students made sure they had a rough idea of the layout of the campus before they took off into the community. Sensei had gone over some of the places they should know about in the meeting after lunch. He had pointed out stores, bars, restaurants, and grocery stores that were within reasonable walking distance.

They had been informed that in the dorm cafeteria there was only breakfast served on Saturday and they would have to cook for themselves for the rest of the weekends. The lunch they had been served had been a special occasion and there would be no repeat performance. This wasn't a problem because on every floor of the dormitory there was a small kitchen for the students to use. So everyone thought it would be a great idea to head down to the grocery store to pick up some food for the rest of the weekend.

When they walked into the store, it was a bustle of activity. There were mothers and kids, elderly couples, and store employees rushing about the store. It seemed no one there was capable of walking so instead they scurried from place to place. It was a little overwhelming at first. But they plowed their way on in, and divided their group to explore the store.

Trowa had grabbed a basket for himself, Duo and Quatre and they began in the frozen foods area. Instead of the glass door freezer, it was all open air frozen bunkers that were hip height. It was easy to browse the frozen foods that way, but it gave you cold toes fast. The new products and food items just contained in the frozen food area mesmerized them. It was an unspoken rule that they were to buy foods with pictures on the front that proudly displayed exactly what they would eat. They were still a little new to Japanese so relying on pictures seemed like the best course of action. Quatre walked around to the other side of the open-air freezer and looked horrified at the price of ice cream.

"Six hundred and ninety eight en for hardly two pints of ice cream?" Quatre quickly moved away from the overpriced item.

"We should pick up some milk, dontcha think. Wanna just share a carton for now," Duo asked scoping out the dairy section.

Trowa nodded and continued his examination of frozen gyoza.

Duo made his way down the refrigerated section and found that the milk was in an end display. Looking down at the milk, he quickly realized he wasn't dealing with skim and 2%, but with something that looked like it was 7%. Duo walked back down the dairy aisle to see if maybe he missed the rest of the milk. Distraught Duo came back to stand in front of the 7% milk again. Duo picked up a carton and started searching the writing like it held the secrets of the world.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Trowa come up next to him. "Hey Tro, man, check it," he smacked Trowa's arm lightly with the back of his hand as he studied the writing on the carton. "This stuff is like 7%. Do they drink this crap," he said as he turned and held the carton up to Trowa's eye level. Duo suddenly realized he had made a grievous error. Duo's mouth dropped open as he realized he had not only thrust a carton of milk into some stranger's face but he had been rambling off in rapid English to someone who most likely didn't even speak English. And to top it off, regardless if they knew it or not, he had been talking shit about their milk! Duo pulled the milk away from the man's face and back peddled a few steps.

"Sumimasen," Duo quickly apologized hoping he could get away without looking like a total ass.

Duo was quick to notice how he had made his error. The stranger had chocolate brown hair, a color that was close to Trowa's. Duo realized that he had subconsciously thought that no one in the store would have that color hair because most of the people there had raven colored hair or hair with a coppery tinge that came from dyeing it. To help Duo justify his mistake further he did notice that the stranger was about the same height as Trowa, just a little taller than Duo's own stature. And to top if off, both Trowa and the stranger were wearing dark blue shirts.

Duo finally looked into his face to see the guy's reaction to the whole situation. He was surprised to see vibrant blue eyes. Duo noticed something more important in those eyes: annoyance. The stranger quickly grabbed his milk, put it into his basket and turned and walked away from the American.

'Oh good going Duo. Scaring off the natives, insulting their food, and looking like a crazy foreigner all in the span of a couple of minutes. A real great cultural ambassador you turned out to be,' Duo mentally berated himself as he stalked off to find his friends.