11/11 Tabitha's blog and the photos

Today, we put on kimonos. We were able to choose a color and some teachers helped us to get dressed. There are many layers and parts to a kimono, and it took a long time to put on. Many of the parts go around the torso, which acts like a corset. It helps make us look skinnier and fixes out posture. We learned that long sleeves meant we weren't married, and short sleeves meant you were. We also had special socks called TABI, which separated the big toe from the other toes so they could be worn with wooden sandals. After putting on the kimonos, we learned how to greet people. We learned how to kneel down, bow, and stand back up (which I found very difficult, so it must take LOTS of practice). There's a specific way to do each one of these actions, and there are 3 different kinds of greetings depending on how formal you want to be. They differ by how much you bend and how much of your hands are on the ground. The ladies really do deserve a lot of respect, being able to do all this so perfectly when they can barely breathe. Nonetheless, we all had a lot of fun, even though it was quite difficult.