So yesterday I found out that those two same classes of English I had on Wednesday I had again yesterday except only with different teachers. Where the American was supposed to teach instead it was a lady from India teaching. Now that's pretty impressive, knowing English, Japanese, and Indian. Then the second class though was different. In this class all the students did were read English books. They were like preschool level but still, making them read books in English? If I had to do that in Spanish class I'd go insane. They were then required after each story to write a summery about it. Wows. Later that day though I went to see the Mayor. Meeting the mayor. Yay. Well, to begin off I was expecting one of my host parents to come and get me from school. Not that mysterious guy in the black suit. If you have no idea who I'm talking about look at the picture of me at the airport. I'm by some Rotary member in a black suit. He kinda creeps me out. I'm sure he's nice and all [well he is actually] but he just scares me. I'm not sure why either. I hope he's not going to be one of my future host families. I don't even want to switch :( I like it here.
So, I arrived at city hall. It was scary at first because when I entered the room all I saw were four men with cameras and one with a video camera. I was freaking out, this couldn't have all been for me?! Thank god it wasn't. I sat there while the Mayor [his name is Chiaki Kashimura] and a bunch of other important looking people discussed about these "cards". I have no freaking idea what these cards are.You just play with them. After that was finished I shook the Mayor's hand, took some pictures with him, then he gave me a present. This stuffed animal.
What is this? I um, I don't know. All I know is that it's the mascot of Hitachi. It has the face of a hippo, a rat's tail, and angel wings. That's about all I know of it. So, I was given that. Then I came home but on the way I was told that on the 24th of this month I have to go to a Rotary meeting to give a 10 min speech introducing myself. WHAT?! Didn't I do that last time? And 10 minutes??? I was asking Pat if she had to do anything like I've been doing. No! She hasn't even been to a meeting yet! Why meeeee???? Then before I went to sleep Ai and Tompi decided to curl my hair. They were amazed how soft my hair felt. I didn't understand. It doesn't feel soft to me but sureee. We went to the grocery store and me and Ai saw this Ice Cream Soda. I told Tompi, "nomu" [drink it]. I didn't actually think she'd get it when okaa-san told us to get a drink but she did. I got a milk tea. I've been drinking those lately and the best I've had so far was Lipton's. But anyway that Ice Cream Soda tasted terrible [I tried it]! Poor Tompi, haha. She drank it anyway.
And so it is today. I had gym today people. haha Oh my god. I walked into the gym and there was some recording of a girl speaking going through the speakers saying the warm-up exercises like you would watch on TV. It even had a cute little tune in the background. I wanted to burst out laughing. I could not possibly explain how funny I found this to be. There was another class in the gym with mine and these warm-up exercises were just weird. I was trying to follow along with the other students [except when the speakers instructed to run I stood in place. Sorry, I don't run] but the movements were just weird. I literally felt like I was on one of those exercise TV programs. After those five minutes of confusion we got to pick what sport we wanted to do. I did badminton. Next time if we get to choose again I'm soo picking table tennis. How funny would that be? So, I played that, went back to class, was completely tired for the rest of the day. I attempted at copying notes in class again, nodded away into sleep, ate lunch, tried to do classwork, nodded back into sleep. I think students here sleep in class a lot more than they did at Hazelton from what I've noticed. This one girl, Kanako, I see her sleeping like all the time. She was totally out at last period. But yeah, they're always sleeping. I can join them haha.
I know how to take the bus home now... I think. I'm pretty sure I'm on my own now after today. If you don't hear from me again after Tuesday or something then you know I'm wandering the streets of Hitachi lost. I was asked to help otoo-san and okaa-san to make more of those cards. Okay, these cards are about Hitachi, somehow. It's called Karuta. I don't know how to play it. Here's a picture of the cover and the cards piled inside.
So, what I had to do was stack the cards in a certain order, then I had to weigh them. If their weight wasn't between 105-107 grams then I had to do that stack all over again. After that I had to put them into the boxes. We made quite a bunch within an hour. And I can finally say that I tried REAL ramen. After we were done there my host parents took me to a ramen shop. Real ramen is the bestt~~ The bowl was the size of my face, no lie. If I picked that bowl up to my face it would have pretty much fit inside. My ramen came with veggies and meat. The veggies were like beansprouts though. I've been eating a lot of foods here I normally wouldn't eat back in America. But the meat was cold. It was after that I realized you're supposed to mix it all together 'cause then the meat gets warm from the water/soup. Then the meat taste freaking awesome! That ramen was good. Better than good. Oishii [delicious]!! It was too big though and I couldn't finish it :( I seriously don't know how Japanese can eat so much. Otoo-san literally gulped down that bowl.
That was my past two days. Figured I'd wait since there wasn't much to write about on Thursday. And guess what? I tried another squid food! Is anyone counting? I think I should start. My new goal is to see how many things exactly are made from squid. Today I tried [well I call it this] squid jerky. It was beef jerky except it was squid. That was actually really good. And did you know seaweed here is eaten as a snack? I tried it from a friend at lunch today. It was seasoned with something but it was still seaweed. It was gross. I tried two other things that were seaweed that I can remember besides that. The one was alright. The other was slippery and gross.
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