長崎に行った！ (I went to Nagasaki!)

So this weekend AFS had a little excursion planned for the three other exchange students and myself. No biggie, just going to 長崎 (Naga-saki). You know, the usual. とても楽しかった！ It was fun just hanging out with the people I went with.

I left on Saturday morning. Our AFS chapter president came and picked us all up: that kid that lives near me (and since he mentioned to me that I never say his name on here, I'll refer to him by his name from now on), Andres, then me, then Anna (the other girl in my chapter from Germany, and the other boy Julian who's also from Germany. Fun stuff. We rode in the car for a good four hours, which was filled with struggling to get a toy open, food, and lots of making fun of Andres. But what else is new? :P

When we got to Nagasaki, we went straight to the Atomic Bomb Museum, no kidding around, we went straight there after eating lunch. As it probably sounds to most people, it was super interesting and at the same time kind of eery. Pretty much anything on exhibit there was from the rubble found after the explosion. Think about it... you're going through multiple rooms filled with the remains of a horrific part of history that real people lived through.

That was the first room that we walked into. I'm not going to post all of the pictures I took but this was one of the rooms that was probably the creepiest. It was also a very difficult room. Like, it just didn't want to cooperate with my trying to take a picture of it. It was dark for maybe a minute, then it would light up for maybe 5 seconds, and then go dark again. HDGHSIUENVFJUHSEURTH. Curses! So, yeah. I got this one and then gave up. 

After the museum, the six of us (two adults and the exchange kids) went to two different parks, the second one being the more amusing of the two, in my opinion. The first one was the Peace Park, and it was basically a fountain, and a path lined with statues that led to this giant plaza thing-y with a GIANT statue in the middle. 

The picture doesn't do it justice, because it looked so much bigger in person. It's called.... the Peace Statue! Wonder where that came from. The park apparently commemorates those who died from the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. So there you have it.

The second park we went to was the Glover Garden, complete with a mansion and giant garden. Massive. Like, you can't even see the whole thing from one spot. The thing even had a giant pond with a bunch of koi fish. And these aren't the tiny ones you normally see in a Japanese steakhouse in the states. They were literally 1-2 feet long and probably weighed a good 25 pounds.

SO MANY KOI FISH.

After the Glover Garden, we stopped to grab some ice cream. I got this castela flavored stuff since apparently castela is a really popular bread in Nagasaki. It's Portuguese, and just like regular bread, it was introduced to the Japanese by the Portuguese and therefore has a Latin-sound to it. Yay history!

After eating our ice cream, we headed off to the hotel to check in and set our stuff down. Then it was off to dinner. We ended up in Chinatown (kind of funny, for some reason. Chinatown in Japan...?) and as such we ate at a Chnese restaurant. We ordered some noodles and this mound of meat, vegetables, crunchy stuff, and sauce. Wow I'm descriptive. The point is that it was all surprisingly delicious, considering the presentation of them.

Once we finished eating, we walked around Chinatown for a bit before heading back to the hotel. For some reason we all got our own room. I wasn't complaining, it just seemed like sharing rooms would've been more cost-effective. Why am I criticizing the room choice? No idea, because it was actually really nice having a room to myself.

When we got back from dinner our chaperons went to bed and of course the four of us stayed up for a good two hours and were ridiculous together. A lot of embarrassing dancing that will never be spoken of to anyone happened. 

The next day we ate breakfast at 7:30 and were out of the hotel by 9. Our first stop was to see the Cosmos flowers.I've never seen so many of the same flower in such large quantities.

And there was more than that my friends, my camera just couldn't fit them all. THIS is why haiku was born here, people. Because it's so easy to find something to write about!

Our second and final stop before heading back to Kumamoto was an outdoor museum-y thing. Either my English is getting really bad or I just suck at describing these things. It was a whole bunch of houses that had been buried by a volcano that erupted a while back. At first I thought the houses had been incorporated into the ground or something and then I realized they were just buried. O_O

Once I was done being stupefied by the fact that these houses had actually been buried under ground, we drove off to get something to eat and catch out ferry back to Kumamoto. The ferry was something I was quite pleased about, as I've liked them since the first time I rode one. I saw jellyfish again, but the ones I saw this time were unfortunate looking as opposed to mysterious and pretty like the ones I saw the last time I rode a ferry.

The trip didn't have any epic ending but it didn't really need it. Everyone (or just me....) was too tired to talk much on the way home. And alright, maybe I was the only one that slept practically the whole way....

All in all, a fantastic weekend, and thanks to the three other 留学生 (and AFS) for making it that much more fun. :)

I'm going to close this post by mentioning something hilarious that happened to me today. I'm sitting at my desk at lunch, and one of my favorite teachers walks in with a book. This woman is kind of on the crazy side, and that's probably why I like her so much, and she's always got something very odd to say. Today, she held up this book and asked me if it was famous in America and if I knew it. The book was called What's Your Poo Telling You? If I haven't said it before and meant it I'll say it again and mean it this time: I died. The funniest part was that she was dead serious. She teaches English, so I'm pretty sure she knew what the title said, and for some reason she was totally serious about her question. So if anyone reading this has ever heard of this book... that's a little weird, and please let me know. 

On that smelly note, I'll end this post abruptly with my name. Shocker, I know.

-Ellie