I live!!

...I LIVE!!

You all can stop worrying now, I'm still alive! This last week was sooooo packed.
Monday: Regular class, no big deal
Tuesday: Final test, and the Perspectives on Japan presentations
Wednesday: Speech in Japanese (3 pages memorized for me!)
Thursday: Economy presentations
Friday: Farewell Party
Today: Economy essay

Since nothing happened on Monday, let's start with...

TUESDAY:

We had our final test for culture. Well LET ME TELL YOU how awful that test was. Yes, she did tell us where she was going to take her information for the test from. Yes, they were handouts she had given us. But despite the fact that the class was SUPPOSED to be taught in English, the handouts were in Japanese as was the test. Which was overall fine for me, except for a few unknown words. The information on the test had less to do with culture and had more to do with "useful" information like how long and wide Japan is, the population, the climate, etc. All of the things on the test were things we would have had to memorize. As I studied, I imagine I got the best score out of all of us. Others studied too, but I think I took it a bit more seriously than the rest did. We just didn't think it was going to be that bad. It was ridiculous and we were all raging hardcore afterwards. Our culture professor was a nice woman, but a terrible teacher with a terrible mix of Japanese and English (Japanglish, anyone?) when she speaks. It wasn't my least favorite class, but I'm still glad its over.

After our test we did our presentations for the one-credit Perspectives on Japan. We had to pick one topic that interested us and do some research about it. Emily and I paired up to talk about the weird theme cafes we found around Tokyo. These included:
- Cat cafe
- Maid cafe
- Butler cafe
- Vampire cafe
- Christ-themed cafe
- Alice-in-wonderland cafe
- Hospital/prison cafe
- Futuristic-prison-on-the-moon cafe

...needless to say, it was interesting. For those who are wondering, we only went to two of these cafes, the cat cafe and the maid cafe. The others were too expensive or required a reservation, etc. Annoying.

Moving on!

WEDNESDAY:
Three pages I had to memorize!! In Japanese! Oh well, I memorized it and gave the speech like a pro. The topic was very close to my heart; I talked about my horrible experience with shutters and unhelpful train-men in Shinjuku station. じゅんや様絶対忘れはしないからね(;_;)♥ It went well and finally I got a 25/25 on a speech!! Previously I had only ever gotten 24/25.

Moving on!

THURSDAY:
Our last econ class! Oh god it was so nice to see it end. Hated that class. My presentation went overall pretty well, aside from the fact that I gave mine right after Niki's... whose was also on marketing. So basically we delivered the exact same speech. Oh well, hopefully that won't affect my grade. Afterwards, we went out as a group with our politics professor to this really nice Italian restaurant in Yokohama station! I had some great pasta with zuchinni and a fabulous drink called Gin Back which was just gin, ginger ale, and a lemon slice. It was delicious and I felt so grown up drinking gin. Even if there was hardly any in there. It was so much fun!! Our politics professor is such a nice person. He picked up the check, even. The WHOLE check. Had I known he was going to do that, I wouldn't have ordered a drank or desert. No, I did not make a mistake just then. I meant to type drank. That is how I differentiate between alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.

Moving on!

FRIDAY:
We had normal class. Well, sort of normal. It started much later and was much shorter than it usually is. For the second half of class, we got all together and made "memory maps", which were basically just giant pieces of paper with a certain topic assigned to each and we would comment or draw pictures, etc. It was really fun to make, actually! Here are some of my favorite bits:

I drew this one, as you can see by how badly its done. It's my host family and I! Under our fabulous portrait I wrote "I love the Senso family!"


This one KC drew most of. It's me looking on lovingly from the third floor at Kiyoshi. Haha!! Surrounded by old ladies, no less. In the corner, I wrote my percentages:
"People who went to the concert:
97% Older ladies (literally Grammas)
2.99% Their husbands
0.01% Foreigner"
Awesome.

The farewell party itself was sooooo nice but of course really sad too. HM and HG came to the party, but HD and HS couldn't make it due to their work schedules. At the party, each host family was supposed to give a mini-speech about their experience with their host child, then afterwards each exchange student would give a mini-speech about their experiences and then their respective buddies would speak. My HM said such nice things about me! Mainly that they were sooooo relieved, especially HG, that I was able to speak Japanese so well, that she was happy to hear that I liked everything she cooked for me (lol), and that I really became a member of the family. It was so nice and of course I got all teary-eyed but I DID NOT CRY.
After that, the host families all got together and sang us two songs, "Furusato" (or "Hometown"), and "Silent Night" in both Japanese and English. It was so cute! When they dimmed the lights, HG was all worried that she wouldn't be able to read the lyrics, but she was able to after all. ♥
After that, each exchange student and their buddy gave their speeches. Poor KC started crying immediately upon getting in front of everyone! It was a sad event after all. Sadly, my buddy Ayako was tied up at her job, so she wasn't able to come. But she did write me a really nice letter that one of the other buddies read to me after my speech, which went well. Once again, I managed not to cry!!
Afterwards, we took loads of pictures:

All of us!! Can you spot HM, HG, and me?

Cute!!

Finally Ayako came!!

Hagi-san and I! Of course you can hardly see him, it could be any random bum off the street. Also, hmm... I see a trend in my poses.

Kiana, Shintaro, and I!

Misato, Brenna, Natsue, KC, and I!

Me, Kaori, and Emily!

Ayako, Manami, me, and Emily!

Manami, Kelli, Shintaro, Kaori, and Kiana!

My Minnesota buddy Marie and I! I'm going to miss her when we leave here. :(

KC and I! This is a great picture. ♥

Emily and I! The dynamic duo!!

Hiromi and I!

Hiromi, me, Shiho, and Ayako! Why so sad, Shiho??

Tried to take a picture of the people in the background, but Hiromi photo-bombed!

Then Hiromi and Ayako BOTH photo-bombed!

And finally I got my picture! Marie, Yinzhou, Yuta, KC, Hiromi, Manami, Kaori, Ayako, and Misato!

BESTIE Niki and I!

And finally we all took a picture with Eguchi-san and the poster we made for him and the rest of the international center!

After the party, KC, Brenna, Yinzhou, Ayako, Natsue, Nono, and I went out to...Denny's for dinner! Urgh Denny's is entirely different in Japan, but no better tasting. But we were with friends, so it was ok! Afterwards when we finally got back to the seminar house, I was surprised to find that my favorite grampa who works at the seminar house, Tsuriya-san, to whom I had given a present to before we left to live with our host families, had bought me a present! They were these cute little model sandals that girls wear with kimono. Of course, they were just a tiny model for decoration, but they were soo cute! I was so happy! When I got back to my room, with my present from Tsuriya-san and the presents I had gotten from the international center at the farewell party, and the all the pictures I had in my camera... I couldn't help it. I had a bit of a blub. It was good that I had waited until I was alone to cry like a ninny, because it ended up with my mascara all over my face. It was such a good day!

Now finally, today! Only three things happened today:

1. I finished my econ paper!! It was up to 8 pages, and I wrote 7! In less than 5 hours! Like a boss.
And after I was done?



My economy textbook. Where it belongs.

After that...

2. We (we being Niki, KC, Emily, and I) went to Yokohama and had Thai food for dinner! It was delicious and spicy and fabulous. I had green curry (of course) for dinner, then no-bake-cheesecake with mango sauce for dessert. Delicious!

And after that?

3. We were hit on in the train by some drunk Navy dude. He called us "kowaki", which is his own failure to remember how to say "kawaii" which means cute. Ridiculous. We got off the train as soon as we could. He wasn't a creeper or anything, but we just weren't in the mood for thinking up excuses for not joining him and his Navy buddies for drinks. After we switched trains, I decided to look up "kowaki" to see if it meant anything. Turns out it means "armpit"! So apparently we are all very "armpit".

And that was today!

Tomorrow... is the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test)! And after that is Ayako's early Christmas party! So I'm looking forward to that.

Wish me luck on my test! Preferably good luck, mind you.
♥