First day of Commute! Dekita!

Hi Everyone,

After reviewing the bus and train routes with me via printed maps until around 11pm last night, my host family walked me to the bus stop. To get to TIU, I need to go to a bus stop, ride the bus for about 6 minutes to the last stop of the line: tsurumagaseki train station. After that, I take the train to the next stop, get off, and walk the rest of the way to TIU. I got to school on time without getting lost. Then returned home the same way. Success! XD We try again tomorrow! Today was the last day of orientation power points/lectures I think. Not sure, but yea, they were very informative and ...necessary. ...another necessity: having an electric fan in my room. T_T

Interesting experiences:
• today: lunch time at the super market, me and a couple other ppl from Hawaii were trying to get some thing we had no idea of what it might be. That proved to be quite difficult. Bentos at the supermarket contained at least one thing in it that we knew. For the most part almost everyone else who tried to get a completely unknown bento/lunch succeeded without difficulty. It was a lot cheaper than shirokiya too. 

• onigokko: one of two games that my host family's six year old daughter loves playing. it's like tag, but a little different when played on the street. Any elevated area was a safe zone, so the curb, short walls, rocks, etc. If someone playing is on an elevated surface, the oni (person out) needs to count up to a certain number. after that number they can tag whom ever they please.

• the bike i rode yesterday didn't have foot pedal breaks on it. there were hand breaks for the front and back wheels. the front one makes a high pitched noise when used (>_<)''' 

• opening ceremony: after we took a 3 hour long placement test, all the JSP (Japan Studies Program) students met their host families at the opening ceremony luncheon. T_T About 1.5 hours into the test my brain had hit overload, and basically stopped working w/japanese or worked super slow and on occasion. Meeting my host family was a bit of an epic fail experience. Couldn't remember any thing, or say any thing correctly for the most part, and thought i saw my host family's daughter Ruru getting frustrated.

lol. I learn lots from her, and even more from her parents. So much vocab... I bought more than enough notebooks today from the kobini by the train station. Turned one of them into a vocab book. Right now I have one page. I can bet that it'll be full in no time, and I might actually use up the last notebook before the end of the semester. I hope so, I want to learn as much as I can. But I understand that my brain might go after a certain point, then it needs a break. Though Ruru can be loud at times, I'm not sure if I'd be getting along as well as I am with my host family so far if she wasn't here. Very thankful she is. When my brain kinda stopped working so well with Japanese the first day, she broke the ice many times by being very energetic and full of different ideas for things to do. They ranged from solving mazes in a kid's book she had in the car, to showing me how to wash money at a temple to please that particular spirit, taking me to her koto class and asking the teacher and a classmate to let me try play, to walking on pebbles. My host mom and dad took part in these activities too, and so everyone was engaged in doing different activities together. It was all a lot of fun!

• As much as I had failed when i met my host family, I was able to talk with them for a while the next night. We stayed up talking till about midnight. It was a lot of fun, and quite difficult too.

ok, I should go sleep soon now. It's basically 5 minutes to midnight here. Hope you all have a nice day! I shall hopefully b updating every week.