As an exchange student, all the books and past exchange students promise that the first three months are the worst and everything gets better after you get through those. That's good news! My first three months weren't too bad at all. I made tons of friends, experienced a lot of new things, and learned more that I ever thought possible to learn in such a short amount of time. However, I'll be honest with you. There were a lot of nights (and I'm sure there will still more) where I would just feel so overwhelmed from all the new things and stress that I would cry myself to sleep. And there were plenty of times when I would think about how much easier life would be if I were still in Ironwood. But then I just have to think about how lucky I am to have this experience and I know I wouldn't trade it for anything.
In the last three months I have come to appreciate my life in Ironwood a lot more. I really, really miss waking up at 6:30 for school. And just driving for 3 minutes to get there. I miss understanding my teachers in school and feeling smart for it. I miss central heating. I miss Ironwood. I never ever thought I would be able to say that three months ago. Ironwood is a nice place. It's small and boring, but even Yokohama sometimes gets boring. Mostly because everything it is so stinking expensive to do anything here. I miss seeing my friends that I have grown up with, but I am happy to have made so many new friends here. But most of all, I miss my family. I love you lots!
But, the good things that have happened far outweigh the hard parts. So, good things that have happened: I have become much more independent. I have met lots of really good people here and made tons of friends both in school and outside of it. I have learned a lot about Japanese culture. I got really good at using chopsticks. I learned how to use trains. I have learned more budgeting skills. AND, the best one of all.... I have learned lots of Japanese!
Before I left, my goal was to be "conversational" in Japanese by three months. Who even knows what conversational means? It's a pretty vague word. Well, I am proud to say that I consider myself conversational. I have been working really hard on only speaking Japanese, especially at school. My school friends have been awesome at helping me, too. Some of them can speak pretty good English, so they use that skill to help me learn Japanese. I can now have conversations with all the girls in my class. Even the ones who don't speak English! Well, most of them anyway. For some reason, I just cannot understand some of the girls' Japanese. But, if I have someone who is willing to slow down their talking a little and bear with me as I try to think of words, we can talk! With a little bit of help from our dictionaries, but still. I feel so good about myself after I get done talking with someone in just Japanese.
Actually, I felt pretty good about my Japanese all week. After school I would come home and talk with my host mom, too. But then I went to Iliana's house on Friday after school. I listened to her talk with her host mom, and my little bubble of confidence popped. I really think I need to hang out with exchange students less often. Iliana is my best friend here, but whenever I hang out with other exchange students I feel less smart. I never ever try Japanese with them, and I compare my abilities to theirs. I know that's not good to do, but I just can't help it! Maybe my Japanese isn't as good as theirs, but that doesn't matter. I am doing the best I can, and that is going to be enough.
So, three months! Yay! It's crazy to think that I only have 8 months left. It's going to go by really fast.
This is pretty off topic, but I'm sure you were all dying to know how my party I mentioned on the last post went. It was really good! I had 8 of my friends over and we did karoke at my apartment's karoke room. Everyone brought snacks to share so we had a ridiculous amount of junk food. And they made me take all the extras after. I gave it to my host mom. I ate way too much junk food, but it was a lot of fun. The only thing was that it was really hard to find English songs that they know well enough to sing with me. I didn't want to sing them alone, because that's no fun. But it was fun to listen to them sing their songs in Japanese!
I am pretty sure we are either singing "Hey Jude" or "The Yellow Submarine"
