Noooo, my favorite pair of pants is dying! I keep hearing people complain that the washing machines here are tearing up their clothes. I brushed it off at the time, but now I'm starting to believe it. I thought it was because there are no dryers to shrink them back into shape, but my pants weren't this tattered when I broght them here. And all my shirts seem to be getting wider.
Had an interesting talk with host parents tonight. I was astounded to find out that I'm not their first. Not by a long shot. They get one every year, but up till now they've come from Taiwan, China, and Korea with the exception of an overnight hiker from Germany named Alex. And except for their first one, from China, and Alex, they've all been women. Maybe that's why Hiroshi still lives at home. I am, however, their first ever true American. The others had lived in America but none had been born there. And I'm certainly the first to look like this (ie, pale skin, orange hair and green eyes). Also, it looks like the yukata is mine to keep. I saw a photo of another yukata on another student that they bought for her.
What I don't get is why she seemed to be so mean to me when I first arrived. Maybe I truly am the first one to be really bad at Japanese, aside from 2 Chinese kids they had for a short time in 1998. She told me a funny story about how they'd only eat meat, hamburgers and Coke. And they were from China. I thought she was describing American kids. They spoke no Japanese and understood very little of what was said to them. So I'm not the *worst* student they've seen.
After you leave, you write the host family a letter. All the other students wrote elaborate, kanji-filled letters, but the Chinese girls wrote beautiful calliagraphic letters which were completely in Chinese. Host parents had to have someone translate them before they could understand. I could read them ok, though. They weren't terribly hard. They said stuff like, 'I'm sorry I was so much trouble' and 'thank you for taking care of me'. Host parents were impressed
Anyway, on my first day with her, she really wasn't very nice. She was speaking in really hard language and seemed really impatient and preoccupied. Now, she's nothing at all like that. She comes accross to me as being rather sullen and/or rude if you don't know her but she's actually really nice. The student we gave a ride to Wednesday told me 'your host mother is so nice' out of nowhere. I didn't see how she could get that impression, since host mom had hardly said anything during the short ride we took. That was completely opposite to my first impression of her. And for a solid month, if we were alone together, there was hardly a word spoken between us. And they do this every single year! Jakobina's host mom does it every year, too, but she was completely different from mine. She is jovial, speaks in easy language, and generally knows everything about hosting students. I really, truly, honestly thought my host family had never done this before. And I guess she meant the other night that *before she started hosting students* she'd never cooked meat before. But don't take my word for it. I seem to get absolutely everything wrong.
Now, I'm starting to enjoy my host family and it will be time to leave soon. I don't think this is a very good program. It should be either shorter or longer. It's just long enough to make you miserable for a month, let you get happy, and then make you sad that you are leaving. Actually, I think the only thing I'll miss is my host family. I doubt I'll miss the rest much. Oh, and I'll miss Bren and Rich and Sarah.
About my day... we have to do another lame project where we interview Japanese people. Fortunately, I get to do mine with Bren! Joy! We have to go to a speech contest tomorrow. They kept trying to get us to sign up for it and no one wanted to do it. Would you? Yeah right, I want to write a speech in a foreign language that I'm not even good at. Sign me up! So only higher level students will be doing it and most of us non-Japanese won't understand a word of it and will just be bored for 2 hours.
Yesterday, we got little pieces of paper with our 'first semester' averages on them. Mine was 92.9. Our teacher is fanatical about marking off fractions of points for tiny errors. One student said 'she can mark off more points than there are in the whole test' and it's true! She always finds *something* to count off for. I usually get 19.5 or 20 on our 20-point daily quizzes, but she comes down hard on tests.
After school, I went to Hiroba and stayed for 3 hours. It was 800-something yen. Then I tried to save money by trying yet again to find the 'Goryokaku' station. WHY THE FUCK IS IT CALLED THAT? IT IS NOWHERE NEAR THE FUCKING PARK. I didn't get lost this time, I found the bitch, but it was nearly an hour's walk. I can't win. An hour's walk vs another 220 yen to go *back* to Hakodate station to go *forward* to Kikyo.
Tomorrow we are going to Goryokaku park to see the cannons being fired. At least, that's what I got out of the photograph on the poster, since I couldn't read any of it. And this weekend, if this stupid weather is good, we are going to see HAKODATE NIGHT VIEW on Mt Hakodate. That's a really big deal here. The view of the city from the mountaintop is supposed to be the best in the world or something. I haven't been because I live too fucking far to go out at night. I do have plans to climb the mountain before I leave, though.
This weekend is the overnight trip to Aomori. It didn't sound like much fun AND you have to stay with a host family, so I'm not going. Besides, it's expensive and I'm running out of cash. My parents volunteered to send me more, so I said ok.