| Current mood: |  sleepy |
| Current music: | Hikki - Colors |
Desperate Revival
Yes. It is I. Long time, no see, blurty. Long time no see. I've not turned my back against journal writing. It's just that whenever I get the blurty writing feeling inside me and press the update button, the page takes forever and a day to load. Blurty is the slowest loading site I've been to since I've received my not so fast cable internet here on the island. So, I really need to just use the ijournal application, as I'm doing now. I wrote the following post in an email to Zandria the other day, and we both felt it was very blurty-ish. So here I go!
I'm alive and tired. Last Sunday, I did this thing where you help carry a portable shrine around town during Kure City's harvest festival, and it tuckered me out. The JETs who did it got fifty bones and a day off work. I'm trying to figure out when I should take my paid leave. I might make three-day weekend a four-day weekend. Or even loooonger!. We'll see.
Mmm...Yes. So I spent the weekend with my host family as usual. This time --and, well, the week before last, too--Ivo, another YFU exchange student, was there to hang out with the family. Ivo was on the year-long program, and we went to the same international-ish school. He's my age and from Switzerland. (Apparently, they're free spirits there, so he up and quit high school to do the year-long program. I just found that out. He just finished high school, and is going to begin university this month. )Yes, during my brief stay in Hiroshima, Ivo took me home a lot of times. (I was just as clueless about directions then as I am now. ^^) Ivo moved in with my host famliy after I left and finished out his year. My host family is just that cool. I think Ivo stayed with them for three months. His other host family (families?) were probably all crap compared to mine. Yeah. So Kazuma and Ivo were all masculinity and games and stuff. I felt a little left out. I actually got to spend more time with Kazuma when Ivo was there than I do usually, though. He always locks himself in his room with the Playstation. I know I sleep in his technical game room, so maybe that's why. Maybe it's just Kazuma being courteous and removing a possible disturbance from my room. Or he's just stingy with the FFX. I'll ask him sometime.
My host sister Asumi (who's twelve now) had this sports day thingy on Saturday, so we went to see that and ate lunch with her. I went home with Kazuma and Ivo at about 1:00, and they played the taiko game. Ivo either bought it while he was in Japan (he'd been traveling around for a month and staying at friends' places before he made his last stop at my host family's), or he brought it with him from Switzerland. Probably bought it here. I did one song, but went upstairs to get away from their testosterone. I could tell they were drooling to continue beating things with sticks to receive their points for musical accuracy. So I went upstairs and made a couple of mp3 cds for Ivo since he didn't have much Japanese music and was interested in sampling.
Last Friday, I went on this field trip with my elementary school students to this place called Imabari on the furthest island south, Shikoku. (Hiroshima City is on Honshu, and so is Tokyo. Honshu's the biggest island. I call it the mainland. I feel very Hawaiian when I so do. ^^) The trip was pretty boring (we went to a towel factory--Imabari City is apparently famous for its towels. In fact, every town in Japan claims to be famous for something.) They get their cotton from Australia. That's all I learned. That's all I remember, anyway. I don't know how the younger kids stood it! There were only two places to laugh in the whole thirty minute video, and they were within the first two minutes. Maybe the first, second, and third graders went to sleep. After the video, the tour guide guy (who patronized me by saying, "How are you??" several times--really pissed me off. I didn't respond after the first time. I just kind of widened my eyes.) further engendered my disdain by handing out useless flyers about towels to the kids for correctly responding to questions about the presentation. The kids played in two parks, ate lunch, and went back home to Ocho Port via ferry. That was cool that the most expensive cost was the train ferry. Everyone's mom packed them a lunch. Well, everyone's mom but the Head Teacher Mr. Tamaoka and me. We're sorry! (We bought some stuff at the store. Maybe I should go to Imabari to shop for groceries more often. >_<)
All weekend long, I outlined, drew on and cut out bats and pumpkins. I plan to give them to my elementary and middle school students in honor of Halloween. I'm gonna write their names on them, and it'll be just like my RA days in Springer all over again. It took most of Friday afternoon and evening to outline and cut out the bats. Asumi helped me cut them out. I promised to give her a few. I'm just glad she enjoyed helping. On Saturday, I started on the pumpkins, and Asumi helped me think up faces and draw and color them. Sunday morning and afternoon, I was in Kure City having my breasts flattened down with white fabric and wearing white shorts with hairy legs and underarms with forty other girls. Four other female JETs did it with me, so at least I got to see them for a while. When I got back home (around nine in the evening), I continued to work on my stupid--my pumpkins. I made Asumi watch a movie on my computer in her room while I worked so that she could relax. Sayuri, Kazuma, and Ivo had gone to see Miami Vice, so I talked with my host mom (my host dad mostly just listens ^^) and worked. Later, Asumi came down and helped me some more. She's just awesome. We moved upstairs after my host mom started complaining that Asumi should go to bed (Ivo was sleeping in the room I usually used on the weekends, so I slept in Asumi's room on the floor last weekend). We had fun. We talked about her many hamsters and how the family eventually wound up getting a dog a couple of years ago. We went to sleep around two.
On Monday, I had planned to go to the 100 yen store and get some pens and stuff for my apartment anyway, and Kazuma decided that he and Ivo would join me. They made a big deal out of dressing for the occasion. Sometimes, I forget that Kazuma is just seventeen. I shouldn't have laughed so much. Oh, well! They know my personality.
Mmm...I wanted to go home after hitting the 100 yen store at this mall-like place called Diamond City that's fifteen minutes away from Hiroshima City by train, but they were all gung ho about going in stores and shit. I followed them, but my heart wasn't in it. They were boys, after all. I've never been shopping with boys. I rarely go shopping with myself. They noticed that I was tired (Could it be from the day-long carrying of the mini-shrine the day before?), but at least I wasn't tired and grumpy. They went into a game center (still at the mall) and I made them take pelicula pictures with me. Wouldn't you know, the Japanese pronunciation is puricura. Whatever, man. The original Spanish word is pelicula, so I'll stick with my pronunciation. I think we went home soon after that. Then I made a couple of cds for Asumi from my computer. Then I went back to the island. Boo.
Well, I guess that's enough for now. I know it's coming out of the blue. I've forgotten a lot of what's happened in my life already. Last weekend was actually the second time I did the carrying of the mikoshi (portable shrine). The first was for the harvest festival on my island on September 26th. I think if I hadn't already participated in that first one, I wouldn't have understood half of what was going on. It was definitely bigger in Kure, though. And longer...
Ja,oyasumi!
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