My classes are the following:
Geography, Math, Chemistry, Religion, English Writing, Physics, English, Japanese, P.E. (Volleyball), Health, Computers, Calligraphy, and my personal Japanese Lessons on Thursday mornings and Friday afternoons. I take those during the Spoken English class and the Japanese Writing class, because I already speak English, and Japanese Writing is too hard for me. As if I can understand any of my other classes anyway.
They use a rotating schedule here, so it's a little different each day of the week. My favorite classes are P.E. and Calligraphy (Shodou). I can actually participate in them. Well I try to participate in math too, but it just makes me feel dumb. I'd be doing fine if I could read the directions, had a textbook, or understood the teacher, but I don't have those advantages. I failed the test my teacher had me take and when I got it back I wanted to cry. I was good at math in America!
This week in Calligraphy we did this thing called "takuhon". First we made these stamps out of cotton wrapped up really tightly in plastic, then cloth. We took this stone slab with kanji (chinese characters) carved into it and covered it with special paper. We got the paper wet with a brush and then soaked up the extra water with a towel. Then we used our fingers to push the paper down into all the carved out areas. Once it dried, we used the stamps we had made to stamp ink over it. The ink doesn't go into the carved out areas, so the whole thing is black except for the kanji. It was really awesome. Maybe I'll take a picture of it if I am allowed to take my camera to class.
On Tuesday, I went to the flower arranging club after school. It was really nice. One of the english teachers from school went with me. She's from Canada, so she could help explain what was going on. She said I was a natural at it and couldn't believe it was my first time. I just copied the teacher, but okay. This is my arrangement:
Last Saturday was the Rotary welcome party for the inbounds (foreign students in Japan this year) here. We all gave our speeches and watched the rebounds (Japanese students that went somewhere last year) give their presentations. After that we had a little social time. It was really good seeing all my rotary friends again.
Not too much else has happened. I just have school. After school I help clean the school. I helped sweep in the homeroom this week, but I think our jobs change every week. It's actually really fun. We have 6-8 girls cleaning one room, so it's not a lot of work and everyone just gets to talk and visit during it. After that I go home. Usually I get there around 5. That's just enough time to change out of my uniform, check my email really fast, and help set the table for dinner.
Dinner is always really good. My host mom is an awesome cook. I usually don't know, okay, I never know what the dishes are called, but they taste really good. My host dad will usually tell me what they're called but I always forget before I write it down in my journal or something. One really weird thing I had this week was my yogurt after dinner. It was Aloe flavored. Like the plant you use for burns. It tasted okay, but I didn't even know you could eat aloe. The after taste was a little weird.
Today, I went to my host grandparent's house for the first time. They were very nice. I also met my host Dad's sister. They live about 40 minutes away by car, but there was bad traffic today because it is a long weekend. (Monday is Elder's Day. No School! yay!) It took an hour and a half to get there. It wasn't too bad though. Lunch was really good. It was actually a hot pot type thing with Udon and Hama fish sent from a restaurant in Osaka. I guess hama is like the one of the most expensive fish to buy in Japan. A very nice rotarian had it sent to my host family. There was also this rice with sashimi and caviar on it. It was really good.
So, I think that's about it for now. I'll try not to wait as long to blog again, but you never know. I'll also try to get more pictures up soon. You can see the ones I already have up at Michael's website. If you don't know his website, just send me an email and I'll send you the link.
