Introductions

Well, it's been a busy and exciting two days. I guess three now. Monday I went to school for the first time, but only half a day to sort of be shown around, yesterday I had my first day of actual classes, and after that I went to my first Rotary meeting.

I bike into school, which takes about 10 minutes, and it's pleasant. At least now, when the weather has been decent. So far, I have been biking in with my host sister or dad, but I hopefully know the way by now. Today one of my classmates biked home with me, so that was nice. I love my class. They have all been super helpful and nice, and seem older than I expected. They are second year high school students, which I believe is like 11th grade, or Juniors, which is good so they won't graduate on me part way through. I already have a few friend dates set up :) Japanese high school is three years. It's set up so that we mostly stay in the same room with the same people all day, and different teachers come. The schedule of classes is completely different everyday, so that's confusing. So far I've been having a lot of math and science classes, which is good because I can understand equations at least, while I understand nothing in classes like geography. I'm excited for home economics where we'll cook and stuff. Today was something to do with clothes, and I was so confused. My classmates do their best to help me though, which is really nice. P.E. is interesting, and definitely less intensive than Uni P.E. They do a lot of stretching, and currently the sport is jump roping! Like with big ones that two people hold. I'm definitely improving, and it's amazing how much of a workout it is. They all assured me that being pink in the face is cute, as tends to happen to me to an embarrassing extent, but I'm not sure about that... The gym has a big stage at one end, and doubles as an auditorium, and it was interesting that to change for P.E., everyone just sort of found places backstage. P.E. is gender segregated. It's been a little intense, so I might cut some classes out and get free time.

It's a good school, Kenmei Gakuin, with nice facilities, in a complex with the elementary and junior high school. The uniform is a pain though, although it doesn't look too bad. The girls wear ties or bowties. But there are four different pairs of shoes (inside gym shoes, outside athletic shoes, inside school shoes, and going to and from school shoes)! That's very annoying because most of the girl shoes don't go above a 7, and I'm size 8, so I have to have boy shoes which are too wide and definitely more masculine looking. And they didn't have my size in a number of the other pieces of clothing, so for the next couple weeks I have to wear a winter skirt, which is way too hot. Oh well.

Kenmei is very into cultural exchanges, through Rotary and other programs, frequently sending their students on exchange, often to Australia, and taking students in. Right now there is a girl from Australia named Gabbi, who has been here for 6 months and has 4 more, a boy from the US who I haven't talked to yet, and a girl from Indonesia who will be here for three weeks. There might be other ones, but I'm not sure.

School clubs are very big in Japan, and most people stay until 6. Today I toured a number of clubs, and was served tea at the Japanese culture club, but I'm not sure what I want to do yet. Right now, I don't want an intensive one that has to practice all the time. On Friday I'm supposed to be visiting some sort of Japanese fighting club, so we'll see about that one.

There are all school meetings on Tuesday mornings, and I was told I would introduce myself next week, so I was a little taken off guard when I was told to go up to the front, but I've been surprisingly not nervous lately for all these mini speeches, even though I'm normally not exactly into public speaking. Maybe it's because I'm talking in a different language, from some of the sentences my host mom helped me make about being excited about Japan.

Those came in handy again at my first Rotary meeting after school on Tuesday. My club is much smaller than my home club, with only about 20 people, mostly old men and some women. I gave my Japanese intro, then talked briefly in English about my hometown, but I'm not sure how much got
across. It was at a nice hotel, and we had an artful dinner. The meeting got a little weirder and more amusing as the old men drank more alcohol. One began gleefully doing card tricks for my host sister Mayuko and I, who was nice enough to come, and they were actually pretty good. One man said he would take us to somewhere with delicious food, since hotel food isn't that great, and that he used to like taking older women out, but now he likes younger ones because they're more easily surprised. My favorite was this very old man, quite pink in the cheeks, who I think had been to Illinois and knew it has a lot of soybeans, who said, "Wait! She needs a nickname! Lets call her Miss Soybean!!", and insisted on that for a while. But then I told them my lovely new school nickname, "Buri-chan," which is better than Miss Soybean but will take a little while to get used to... As entertaining as it was, Mayuko and I were glad to finally leave.

I'm looking forward to going to school tomorrow, because the people are so awesome, but we'll see how long that excitement lasts... I have to go to school on Saturday, which is definitely not cool, as I am still not a morning person and that leaves only Sunday to sleep in :(