026

FIRSTLY. I lost all my music off my iPod~! Itt just.... disappeared, I plugged it in to charge and it just wiped itself. I am devastated. over 2500 songs, just... gone. I've managed to scrounge up about 650 songs that I had backed up on my external hard-drive, but there is still a LOT missing. sad, sad sad face.

Anyway.

So now that we have all the new exchange students here, we had the welcoming party/meeting last night. I shall introduce you to the new kids;

From Canada > Kaela

From Finland > Evelina
From America > Dakota and Kimber

They're all pretty cool, and I'm excited to become better friends with them and show them the ropes :D

I have a new pet! His name is Yuusuke (means something along the lines of 'courage' coz we thought he was going to die lol) - he's a little puffer fish that my host brother won in one of those claw machines, but I adopted him. So I bought a little fishbowl and some rocks and plants and food and now he's just chillin' in my room :3

And yeah, again, just school. School school school. It is painfully boring, but this week I have only 2 days of school (because of exams) and then in 3 weeks my family arrive :D

Peeeeeeace x

025

Whooaa Australian elections are going mad. I'm stressing out from the lack of news that I can get from here. Sorry to all who are Liberals reading this, but I'm going for Julia... So good luck to her. If Abbott gets in, I will be very sad. Hmph.

Anyway, because I am the lovely old age of 18, I had to cast my vote, so I moseyed down to the Australian Consulate office in Sapporo (conveniently close to the station) and cast my vote. Yay me. It felt very nice to be in a little room of Australia.. a little slice of home, even if the receptionist was a Japanese lady. But even seeing the coat of arms and the stuffed koala toys made me feel confortable there lol.

On Friday afternoon I escaped school early and went with Rotary to Chitose, to help out the Rotoract club with their food stall. Initially my host club ditched me there, and there wasn't much to do apart from prepare and package stuff, but soon the sun went down and the taiko drums started up and the dances started parading in, and my host club people returned with the Chinese lady here for University, so we hung out and in the end it was quite fun.

On my favourite day of every week (Saturday), I had my fellow Aussie exchanger friend Samantha come over. We had a look at this little festival in my town which wasn't great, so we went and did Karaoke and Purikura instead.

...lovely makeover done there by Samantha haha.

That night we went to the airport to greet our newbie exchange student #2, Dakota, from America. Earlier this week I also went to the airport to greet the first newbie, Kaela, from Canada. A Finnish girl arrived too, but I don't know anything about her... and the last girl from America arrives on Friday.

Yay! I'm so happy to have new exchanger friends. I miss the old bunch of exchangers but now we get to be the senpai's and know everything :P

On a more depressing note, school has resumed. Bleehhhh. I'm being ignored again - only a few people say good morning to me, and after that I pretty much don't get a second glance from anyone. I don't really care. I'm tired of Japanese school. I just count down the hours til I can come home here and hang out with my host family.

Oh. And, it's now been 7 months of being in Japan :) It's going very quickly. One more month until my family come!!! And then after that, it's the homeward run. I will admit that I'm excited to come back home. It's great here, but Australia is where my heart is, as soft and corny as that sounds haha :)

024

I am jealous! The Japanese girl going to my town on Student Exchange, Haruka, left yesterday evening and arrived in Merimbula this morning. I'm jealous that she gets to go and see my town and my family and my dogs, and sleep in my room, and see the ocean, and eat fish and chips, and.. basically do everything that I miss. But I have less than 5 months left here, and as much as I'm looking forward to getting back to my life, I know that for now I'm in Japan, and I'm going to keep making the most of that.

So anyway, I'll backtrack a few days and share what I've been up to.

Last week, Haruka and I were taken to the City Hall to meet with the Mayor - my second time meeting him. We chatted for a while, then we were interviewed for the newspaper by a few journalists. This meeting was more for Haruka because of her exchange to Australia, but I was invited too seeing as though I'm here, of course lol.

I also spent a day with my host family in an area down south of Chitose, out in the farmlands. It's like the week where everyone goes and visits temples and graves of family members, so I got to go along for the ride.

We spent the afternoon at a relatives farm, eating yaki-niku and talking, and I napped a bit, the kids ran around, and we picked corn from their fields lol. It was alright, but because of the heat, I was tired and wanted to go home and sleep.

So the other day I was invited to go and watch a play that my next host sister was starring in. I understood the Acts, but I didn't understand the meaning of the whole play as one. So... I don't know lol. I still got a few laughs out of it.

So yeah. I start school again on Thursday.... Bleh. I'm not too keen on going. I suppose it will give me time to sit, and sit, and sit. And ponder... things. And I suppose study Japanese and write some letters and things lol. I'll find something to do.

Something I am looking forward to is my family coming to visit in just over a month. Yay! Like I am seriously looking forward to it; being able to show them around my new life, take them to restaurants I've liked and places I've seen, and then together we'll all go down to Tokyo, Osaka, Nagano, Nagoya, Hiroshima and Kyoto. It'll be the first time I've been to that area, because apart from Okinawa, I haven't left Hokkaido.

Anyway, more on that when it actually happens!

But it is amazing just how fast this is going. When you think about it... my family arrive in just over a month. After they return to Australia, it's only 3 months until I go back to Australia. 3 months! That's crazy. It doesn't feel like I've been here for nearly 7 months at all.

023

Hello August! The months really are flying by. I now have just over 5 months of this exchange left, yet I still remember my first week here as though it were last month. Wow.

So late July, my host mum bought me a Yukata (summer kimono), which I wore to a Rotary meeting and to the Eniwa Summer Festival. It's really fun to dress up in it, and get my hair done, and have my host mum's voice go super high when she calls me "KAWAAAAAIIII!!!" haha.

So, skip forward a few days to the 5th of this month - the other Australian girl Sam and I took the hour-long train to Otaru, which is north of Sapporo and right on the ocean. It's really hot now, being summer and all, but it was a fun day.

On Thursday, I went to Sapporo to meet Dylan and his host dad, to go to a museum. We caught the train back to Shin-Sapporo, then back-tracked yet again to a smaller station, and then arrived to find that the museum was closed haha. So, we backtracked AGAIN to Sapporo and went to the City Hall, where the museum had a little exhibition - it was for the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing (6.8.45 - this year was the 65th anniversary). After that Dylan and I went and saw Toy Story 3, in Japanese, in 3D. We understood it too :D

Then today I spent the morning watching baseball with Rotary... the Eniwa club were sponsoring it so we had to attend. We sat in the sun in the stands for about 2 hours, and I didn't bring a hat, so now I'm sunburnt :/ and I only just got over my heatstroke (...3 day headache was NOT fun).

After that we went to Saitou's farm which has fully grown, and I ran around picking beans and eating them and looking at the corn and pumpkins and taking photos of dragonflies. Ifelt like a little kid again haha. Then we went and had lunch, and I went back to Saitou's house to look at the wedding video from his daughters wedding (the one I went dress shopping with). So I got to see Ganjiro and Sabu again, which made me happy :)

I was supposed to go camping at the beach near Otaru with my host family last night, but it got cancelled because of the rain... and I was supposed to go to a small town tonight called Yuni, to meet with the Japanese guy who just returned from his exchange in Australia, but my Rotary Club said I wasn't allowed :( Maybe another time. But anyway, that's it for now. :)