So on Sunday I flew into Kumamoto on a one and a half hour flight. Compared to the 10-hour one that I had just taken that was nothing whatsoever. And I slept through the whole thing. Say whaaaat? Actually, I tend to sleep on airplanes, so no surprises there. I flew in with two other kids, one from Germany and one from the Philippines. As we were getting out baggage from baggage claim we looked outside the doors and there, holding a giant 'WELCOME AFS' banner are more than 10 people, waiting for us. Pardon my lameness but it made me feel like a celebrity or something. ;D So the three of us walk over to them, and the two boys found their families straight away. There I am, looking for a family that was not my host family because they wouldn't be home until later that day. There's me looking totally lost when all of a sudden a woman was like "Ellie-chan? Ellie-chan?" and in my head I'm just like "Thank god, you found me!" Turns out they had no idea what I looked like so we were both just as lost as the other.
They are currently hosting a kid, who came along with. Which was great because he was from the U.S. so I had someone that could help me for the first hour with translating and being a companion in general.
Before I even went to their home, however, we had to drop him off somewhere for a club of his, and so I was left with this family. They turned out to be so. nice. Ridiculous. There was the mom, dad, two daughters and a boy. AAAAANNNNNND, they took me to a sushi restaurant. :DDD BUT. Not just any sushi restaurant. One of the ones with the moving belt that circles around the restaurant to bring you your food. I know. You should all be jealous. It was kind of awesome.
That's it, pretty much. You order from this touch screen menu and it comes out in literally 90-120 seconds. You have no idea how happy that made me. Every now and then the sushi would be sent out on this mini-shinkansen train (shinkansen in the train in Japan that goes something like 200 mph; very fancy), it would stop at your booth, you'd take your sushi, press the button to send it back and voila! Pure awesomeness. Each plate of sushi only had 2 pieces though, so you had to get quite a few plates. We ended up getting something around 20 plates. Probably more. It was so nice of them; I wasn't even their host kid.
After eating too much sushi, they took me back to their house and I ended up having a broken but very fun conversation with the host mother. She ended up being intrigued by my nose ring and my tattoo; not judgmental, which kind of surprised me. She was so nice; she set up her bed upstairs so that I could take a nap if I wanted and everything.
At 7 o'clock, my host mother came to pick me up! :) On the way home we stopped by a grocery store and she bought stuff to make dinner at home.
When I got into the house I was greeted by pretty much the entire family except for my host grandparents. The kids were pretty shy, but they said hi... Before sitting down to dinner, I handed out my gifts for everyone, which I think everyone enjoyed because who doesn't like getting free stuff?
Dinner was... a lot. Rice, yakitori, tofu (:S), and a bunch of other stuff that I don't even remember. And everything was good except for the tofu. I have always wanted to like tofu, but this was just too much. The texture was just not my thing.
By now I was so. Hot. Like, boiling and nasty and sweaty. Tmi. So when they announced that I could take my both/shower I was so happy. I'm getting undressed in the room next to the shower and guess who was keeping me company? A cockroach. Yup. The little guy was perched on a plastic bag, staring me down. I like my privacy in the bathroom. I didn't appreciate this cockroach waltzing in on my time for myself. I stepped into the shower, trying to forget about it, and when I came back out it was still there. Sigh. By now I was doing my really weird thing where I talk to an animal to try to stop myself from freaking out. Needless to say I hurried into my pajamas and went to say good night to everyone.
Most of this morning was pretty uneventful. I talked to my host mom a lot. Showed her my photo album, told her about life in Chicago. At 2ish we left to go to my school so that we could get my uniform and schedule. Meeting the principle was terrifying. I was afraid that I would do something to offend him by accident. And it was impossible to read his face so I couldn't tell if he hated me or not.
Next I talked to my counselor. We got my uniform and schedule and he told me that tomorrow I have to give 2 speeches; one to my teachers and the other to my classmates. Each one minute. In Japanese. Dx Yeah, I kind of died. He said that I an read them but I'm still terrified. After coming home I immediately started them, and with the help of my awesome host mom I was able to scrap something together. I don't even know that the one is 1 minute but by the time I was done I was too exhausted to care.
Oh! My Ojii-chan came home today! He's so adorable. I was sitting at the table writing my speeches and he comes over with a drinkable yogurt bottle. He read me the bottle and I think he told me that I should try it. It was pretty good, actually. He comes back over about 5 minutes after he notices I finished the yogurt with a big bottle of milk tea, says a bunch of stuff that I didn't understand, and ended up giving me some of that too. Funniest thing ever. He's awesome. And he's my height, if not shorter which just catapults his awesomeness.
Anyway, there's so much more that write about but I don't have time if I want to be able to get up on time tomorrow. Wish me luck on my speeches! :S
-Ellie
Good luck Ellie I know you will be great :)
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