PLEASE READ: I've been getting an email from AFS for the past week or so about being a 'welcome family' or a host family to incoming exchange students from all over the world. Unfortunately, the school in my area doesn't accept foreign exchange students so my mom can't volunteer to be one. :( SO, I figured I would post about it and maybe someone would see it and be able to help these kids out. Basically, a welcome family is not the student's permanent family, they just house them for 6-12 weeks while AFS finds a permanent home for them. Which makes it sound like they're homeless (and they kind of are when they get here), so help the homeless and look into it! If you're interested, go here. Just plug in your zip code and it gives you a list of students coming to your area. July 26th is the last day for placements according to the email, so hurry!
Alright, now that that's done, I'll update on my exchange. Nothing super big has happened recently. The only thing worth mentioning is that I got an email officially stating that the Hattoris are actually my host family and I finally got my school information! I'm not going to give the exact name because who knows who's reading this, but I will say that it's a school of about 1,000 students (a third the size of where I go now), boys and girls attend, and it's not religiously affiliated. The information sheet also says that school ends their summer vacation on August 23rd, which is the day that I leave. O_O I'm not sure if that means that I'll be starting school the day after I arrive, but if it does... I'll probably still be super jet-lagged and sleepy that day.
My school offers baseball, softball, basketball, volleyball, soccer, badminton, handball, table-tennis, tennis, Judo, swimming, Kendo, Kyudo, climbing, track & field, and rugby. I was secretly hoping that somehow they would have figure skating, but I guess most schools anywhere in the world wouldn't have that kind of facility on campus. I'm thinking either soccer or track & field because those are the only two that I've ever seriously participated in or shown talent in. As far as clubs go, the English Speaking Society caught my attention. I'm still debating whether that would be a smart move or not. On the one hand, I could help people practice their English, but on the other, it's probably not going to help me improve my Japanese as quickly as it could. There's also a class trip that was mentioned where I would be going to Tokyo and Nagano, but it's 8,000 yen (approximately $1,000), and I'm not sure that I can afford it, especially after already spending so much money on the actual exchange. And I really shouldn't complain because I'm so lucky to even be going to another country for 5 months. Seriously, how many 17-year-olds can say that they've ever studied in another country?
I probably should've broken those two paragraphs up even further so you didn't have to stare at two huge blocks of text, but I got carried away with what I was writing. :)
More news hopefully coming soon. Only 30 days, 18 hours and 38 minutes left! (did I mention that I have a countdown set on my phone?)
-Ellie
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