My second week at school is almost over, and I'm still having tons of fun. I've decided I need to start carrying a camera everywhere to capture all the unique and interesting sights I've seen here (examples, a huge, animatronic teddy bear at the mall, and about thirty bicycles right next to a sign reading 'no bicycles' in english) so from here on out, you can start expecting more photographic evidence of my adventures abroad.
And adventures they have been! My schedule's been reorganized a bit, so I have several classes with the grade four students (because my school is both a high school and a junior high, the first year of junior high is called grade one, so grade four at Hokusei would be grade ten at Canadian schools, and grade one at most Japanese high schools) who have all been happy to have me, and have welcomed me into their classes with open arms. It's fun seeing how each class has it's own unique flavour. Because the same students are almost always together, the classes seem to have a stronger sense of community than the classes at my high schools in Canada did. With each new class comes new friends, and new experiences, one class spent about twenty minutes quizzing me on my thoughts on various boy bands.
Overall, everyone's been awesome, and I have a really great schedule. Since I don't have to worry about credits, I'm pretty much taking a bunch of fun classes, and missing out on the classes I don't like so much (math, I'm looking at you). I have history, a couple english classes, a class on Japanese culture, music class, a few P.E. classes, a Bible class, a couple home ec. classes, and of course, Japanese. Yup, no math for me! I'm getting more comfortable with the layout of the school and working on my Japanese, so school seems to go a little more smoothly every day.
Today, however, I had to leave class early to go to my first rotary meeting, which, like many of my experiences in Japan, made me both excited and nervous. Excited to meet all the new people, and nervous because I'd be giving a presentation completely in Japanese. Because of the venue for the lunch meeting, I was unable to use the powerpoint presentation I'd prepared in Canada, so it was just me talking in front of the whole club. I think my Japanese was a little sloppier than usual because I was so nervous, but my fear was unfounded as everyone was very kind to me.
The rotary meeting of my host club had a somewhat different feel to my sponsor club in Canmore. The club is made up of mostly men (I believe there were three women present, including me) and was in a slightly older age bracket. However, they were very kind and made me feel very welcome. The meeting was held in a very nice hotel, and the traditional Japanese lunch was delicious. After lunch I was brought upstairs for a meeting with a few key members of the club, who explained the rules about months reports and my allowance, which was a little intimidating at first, but also very informative, and was a pleasant experience overall.
In other news, my host sister Ai returned from a week spent in Nagoya yesterday, and brought back some of the city's traditional snacks. Yum. I love the food here.
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