"American" Party

Just now one of my students was telling me she had an American party with her friends during summer vacation. It's a riot. She showed me pictures of her friends. They put on wicked red lipstick and wore what they thought were American-style clothes. So one girl wore a Beatles t-shirt and another girl wore a Batman t-shirt, and I was like, okay, sure, Americans like those things, even though the Beatles girl probably thought the Beatles were American. And then the others wore kind of nondescript clothes that weren't necessarily American, but not decidedly unamerican, either.

To prepare, my student tore up patches of newspaper and glued pictures of American pop stars on them and put them on her wall. For snacks, they ate french fries, which made me laugh, but also pizza and Coca-cola, which I said was correct. Actually, what she first told me was that they ate french fries and said "Let's party!" and I laughed a lot.

She also told me that one of her friends was late, and I was like, that's pretty American. You're supposed to be late to a party. Apparently this friend doesn't speak English, but she figured out how to say "I'm so sorry, I'm late" and called ahead.

I told them that typically and American party with girls their age would have beer or something, plus chips and other snacks, but probably not fries. Also, we don't put pictures of pop stars up on the wall for a party. She said next time maybe they would have a Japanese party, and I was like, aren't all your parties Japanese? And she was like, well, we'll wear yukatas and eat udon or something, and I was like, okay.