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Far out. How have I managed to not write for another month and a half?? I can't believe how fast this is going now. It's bittersweet - it means I'm closer to returning home, but it's around now that I'm beginning to get into the swing of things. Anyway. I shall update some more now!

Firstly, I am seriously thinking of becoming vegetarian, or someone who eats a lot less meat, when I come home. There is just too much meat here. Breakfast, lunch and dinner has meat of some sort in it. It's getting un-tasty.

I've helped out at my host-dad's farm twice now, planting potatoes, corn, beans and pumpkins. They'll be ready to harvest by August, and I couldn't help but find it funny that I was actually playing real-life FarmVille.

Earlier this month, I went shopping with my two host sisters in Sapporo, because one of them is getting married soon. So, we spent the morning in this awesome changing room on the 4th floor of this wedding dress shop, sifting through fluffy dresses of all colours, and taking photos of my host sister. We all decided our favourite was this dress with roses lining the bottom of it. Unfortunately it was the most expensive too lol. I don't know if she'll end up getting it or not.
I stayed in Sapporo for the rest of that afternoon and met up with the other exchange girls, to go to a place called Rejaspo (from what I understand it's like a... I guess you could say like a fun activity centre, where you can do rock-climbing and obstacle courses and things.) We waited for the bus for about an hour, but it never came (or we got the times wrong!). It was fine in the end though, we all just had coffee and later walked to Odori where we listened to some University student buskers. They were actually really nice to listen to, so when they finished we went and talked to them and bought their CD. They're called the Nakanishi Riku Trio.

The sakura (cherry blossoms) have bloomed!! They line the street that I live on, and they're in a lot of other places too, although there hasn't been as many as I was expecting. But then again, any photos I ever saw were of the big parks of cherry blossoms in Tokyo, so that was what I subconsciously expected lol. Last weekend, I went to the Naganuma International Festival. I was expecting it to be like an outdoor thing, as festivals usually are, but it was all inside this building, and it was largely directed at Primary School kids. The other exchange students came too, and inside the main hall we all had our own tables for our countries. The Australia table had a big flag on it, so I put my photos out too for everyone to see. I also put a pile of badges on the table, so they were all taken by the end lol. I'm kicking myself for not putting all my business cards on the table too, it's definitely true about never being able to give all the cards away. So it was pretty fun, quite tiring seeing as though we were signing shirt after shirt (G'Day! Laura, Australia *little drawing of Australia*) and stamping their little "passports",and teaching the Chicken Dance. That was interesting. Haha. We also did the whole swapping of banners and drawing of raffles and taking of photos and things. It was a busy day.

The next day afterwards, my host dad, myself, two of the other Exchange Students and the University student from China that my club is hosting all went to a small art gallery, where we painted our own designs on clay mugs. I drew cherry blossoms and wrote, in Japanese, "Spring's cherry blossoms, Hokkaido".

That afternoon I went to Sapporo and met up with another Australian friend of mine (not from Rotary) and we went up the top of the TV Tower. I also found out that there was a place just near the station that sells English books, so I bought three, and I've already read them all (dammit). On Thursday after school, I met up with the other Australian exchange student, Samantha. We had coffee and shopped a little and went to the top of JR Tower at sunset.

It was very pretty, but I was late for my train and ended up missing it by 2 minutes, dammit. And on the train home, I could smell this sort of fishy odour...　I thought it was just the onigiri (rice ball) that a lady nearby was eating, but soon I looked down at the stairwell by the train door to discover a lovely pool of vomit. It made me feel nauseous until I got home, 20 minutes later. Yuck.

So the weather is warming up significantly now - I'm sitting in the loungeroom where all the windows are open, and it was too hot to wear jeans today. School isn't going too badly, I just feel like a loner all the time, because barely anyone talks to me, unless they need to. So at lunch, even though I sit on the floor with two other girls, I don't talk. Between classes, anyone who sits near me gets up and goes to chat with a bunch of their friends on the other side of the room. I know I should go and try and strike up a conversation, but realistically, I still have a very limited amount of vocabulary and it would end up awkwardly petering out. At least, that's what happens every time I do try. I'm sure they get tired of me having to look up every second word in the dictionary.

I'm also torn between whether I want to quit calligraphy club or not. I like calligraphy, but sometimes the actual people in the club just don't seem very accommodating. Especially the 3rd graders, who think they're top stuff, even though they're all younger than me. It's interesting that even being 18 amongst 16 year olds, I feel like a baby amongst them. It's not that they're mature or older looking, because they still squeal and act like pre-teens most of the time, but I still feel extremely quiet and out of place in class. It's frustrating, and makes me wish I could keep my normal confidence that I have out of school. Oh well.

Well that's enough rabbitting from me. One last thing though, my family have decided to come and visit at the end of September, which I'm super excited about! Yay! I can't wait to see them.

My host-dogs, Ganjiro and Saburoku