Host Family!

I am so excited! Right now I am at my Summer Scholars camp at BYU. This week has been awesome, but I am going to tell you about the best news first.

Two days ago, during our free time, I checked my email hoping to hear from Chip and Sharon about Japan. The email was not there, so I was really disappointed. After a while one of my friends here told me to see if anything went to my spam folder. I didn't think there would be because Chip and Sharon's emails always go to my inbox, but I checked anyway. It turns out that my host Dad had emailed me on the 10th! I was so excited!

My host family is adorable. My host Dad and Mom seem really nice and they have two sons ages 5 and 6. Their names are Toro (5) and Wataru (6). I guess they are both really into Pokemon, so I'll have to work on that.

I will live in Yokohama, which is a little ways south of Tokyo on Tokyo Bay. It is a huge port city. My host family's house looks really nice. They live in a complex with a swimming pool and gym and there are tennis courts pretty close to my house that I could see on google maps. That is really exciting for me. Now I'll be able to keep in shape while I am there.

The school I will be going to is an all girls Catholic school, so that'll be interesting. I guess I will have to travel about an hour to school each day. My host Dad said I'll take a bus from my house to the train station (10-15 minutes), then take a train to another train station (35 minutes), then walk from that station to my school(10-15 minutes). That will be a good time to write in my journal though. That is about all the news I have for now. I don't have any official Rotary information, but I am going to be in the Kanagawa East Rotary Club, in District 2590.

Okay, now for the rest of the things I have been doing. On Friday the 13th, I went to the outbound Rotary Conference out at the Conserve school. It was awesome! I had a ton of fun and it got me really excited for my departure. Grand Rapids is still to come... Anyway, I got home on Sunday and we took off for Utah! It was great to hang out with AnnaMarie. Katie, Benjamin, Christy and James so much! We stopped at the Badlands, which were spectacular, and we even saw the Jolly Green Giant in Minnesota!

Once we were in Utah, we all took a trip down to Arches National Park with Michael, Caroline, Ryan, and Calvin. Ryan is getting so big and Calvin is such a sweet baby. We did a lot of hiking in the hot sun and saw some really pretty landscape.

On Sunday, Calvin got his baby blessing. That was nice. After that, Dad, Benjamin, Christy, AnnaMarie, and Katie left. James and I went to the other two hours of church with Michael and Caroline. After church we dropped James off a BYU and I haven't seen him since. Hopefully I'll be meeting up with him during my free time on Friday. Monday morning, Caroline helped me get all checked in for camp here.

Camp is really fun. I am in the math/cryptology class and it is really interesting. It goes a lot into computer sciency stuff so I was totally lost yesterday, but today I understand it! It was very exciting when it just sorta clicked. We have done really cool activities each day. Monday we had a BBQ and went up into the canyons to a park. Tuesday we had a Pajama party and watched Enchanted. It was really fun and even the boys liked it. :) Yesterday we took a trip to Temple Square up in Salt Lake City. It was so beautiful. I love going there. It is alway so peaceful. We got to watch the Joseph Smith movie there too. The movie was so powerful. I cried a lot, and so did a lot of other people. Tonight we are having a dance with the sport camps so I am very excited! It is going to be really fun. Everyone here is so nice and I have made a lot of new friends. I really want to keep in touch with a lot of people, then maybe I'll see some of them at BYU if I go to college here. Anyway, I just wanted to share all of my good news. I should get going now, though. Free Time is almost over.