Well, guess who's back? :D
I have been so busy these past two weeks! My visit with Yuki went even better than I imagined--communicating was hardly a problem, and we had so much fun doing all kinds of things together. She could speak, as well as write in English really well, and was able to understand just about everything that I told her. I tried to make things as simple and easy for her as possible, so it all turned out fine in the end.
The only thing that was difficult was having to say good-bye... I still miss her so much. I'll go into detail about what it was like later on, but now I'll say that I'm still very sad about it. We both had to do everything that we could to keep ourselves from crying when we were at the airport--I finally did end up breaking down a little bit on the way home. ._. The same thing happened after Melissa left; I hate saying good-bye to such good friends, especially when I know that there's a chance that I may never see them again, since we live so far away from each other. It did help a
lot to find a really sweet e-mail from her the next morning, though. I'll include it later on in the update!
Anyway, like after Mel came, I want to talk about most of the fun things that we did together, starting from the day we met. I wrote everything down each night, so it would be easy for me to remember. I'll try not to go into detail
too much, but... you know, I have this horrible habit of ranting, so it'll be safe for me to say that this will be in NO way a short update! XD
( Day One - Her Arrival )( Day Two - The Aquarium )( Day Three - Six Flags )( Day Four - Mall and Back to Grandparent's House )( Day Five - Just Hanging Out )( Day Six - Shopping and Other Fun Stuff )( Day Seven - Back to Japan... )So... that's all I've got to say about the trip. It took me FOREVER to type that out, so even if no one actually reads the whole thing, I'm still proud of myself. XD I was never able to type all of the stuff out that Melissa and I did when she came, but I do have a journal that I wrote in every single night, so I've got that to look through. One of these days I'll re-type that, as well, and then make a scrapbook full of all of the memories that I have of meeting some of my best friends.
Pictures will be coming soon, too, right after my grandfather sends me the ones from his digital camera!
Okay, so besides that, there's one other thing that I'd like to talk about: meeting some
more Japanese people that visited. :D You see, my friend Sadie was a host to three girls who were part of a group of exchange student that visited our town. They actually arrived on the very day that Yuki left for Japan, which was kind of disappointing because it would have been nice if they could've met each other. Still, Sadie wanted to introduce them to me, and I was eager to meet them, so she invited me to go to a special dinner that was being held for the students on their last night staying here. It was so awesome--I even saw some of my other friends, who were also hosts to a few of them! All of the students were just so cute and sweet... you couldn't have found anything rude about their behavior even if you tried. I just love how polite the Japanese are.
But anyway, we had a really nice time together. We ate a great dinner, and the students even performed a traditional Japanese dance for us wearing their beautiful kimonos, as well as sang a couple of songs. One of them was "Love Me Tender", and one of the guys even played a guitar along to it. I have a few pictures of them, thanks to Sadie, because she copied them onto a CD and let me download them onto my computer. These were all taken by someone else; I had to resize them because the originals were humongous!
Performing a Japanese danceCute poses! ...Er, except for the group leader, lol.Singing for students at the schoolAfter another performance; the other girl was an exchange student from BrazilAfter the dinner and everything else was over, Sadie invited me to spend the night at her house. Three of the students were staying one more night there, so I was ecstatic! Their names were Hitomi, Kotomi, and Mika. It helped me get over some of the depression that I had been dealing with after Yuki left. XD We made one stop by my house so that I could gather up a few things to wear, and then we were off. After we got there and were ready for bed, we hung out in her room for a while. They actually gave me a ton of gifts--a calendar, coin purse, fan, lots of (cuuute) stickers, juggling balls and other things they use at festivals... and that's only half of it. I just can't remember what the other things were because my brain is about to explode due to typing so much today.
They also had a really neat Japanese girls' magazine called
Popteen, which I looked through obsessively. It had tons of pictures of most of the fashion there--I wanted every single outfit that I saw. It's just not fair how adorable everything is over there! Besides that, I think that I
really shocked them by knowing who the girl was on the cover. It was Ayumi Hamasaki, and as soon as I said that they all gasped and were like, "YES, yes! You know her?!" It was so nice to have other people to talk to (in real life, for a change) about all of the things that I'm interested in! They knew and loved everything that I did--Pokémon, other anime shows, Utada Hikaru, everything. (Yuki and I also sat and watched several anime shows on Cartoon Network in our hotel room. *dies from happiness*) I honestly had so much fun hanging out with all of them!
After I mentioned Hikki, one of the girls pulled out an mp3 player thing that she had, and showed me her newest song called "Flavor of Life". I haven't been able to stop listening to it since then. I downloaded a music video with the song on YouTube, but you can hear sound clips of it on her
website. Both versions are really pretty.
Soon after that, we went on to bed, and then woke up the next morning to meet everyone else for breakfast at a nice restaurant. It gave everyone a chance to say good-bye to each other before they had to leave. Despite being a little sad, we all had a great time--my friends Pete and Amanda were even there! The student that was staying with Amanda was really sweet and outgoing, and best of all, her name was Kei... which sounds like
Kay, so she and I giggled about that for a while. XD I ended up getting the addresses and name cards of nearly all of them, and I gave them mine, so I'm hoping that we'll able to keep in touch like Yuki and I have. I would really love that.
I actually didn't cry when they all had to leave, but I was still really sad. I wish that I could have spent more time with them--but hey, who knows what could happen in the future? In fact, after everything was over with, I was talking to my mom about how much fun it would be to be an exchange student... and she said that it sounded like a perfect idea for me, since I'm so interested in it! There was a lady there who was talking to me about the program, and she said that you didn't have to be in public school to do it. If I can find out a little more information about the whole thing, and save up some money before I get out of school, then it just might be a possibility. I'd really like to go to Japan if I did that--more than England simply because I'll be going there later on this year. (But it would still be my second choice!) It would be awesome if I was able to go to Osaka, where Yuki currently lives in order to go to college, and I was able to meet up with her there. I'm all for finding out more information about this!
Anyway... I have to shut up now, lol. This update made up for a ton that I've been too lazy to type up in the past, so don't expect another long one for quite some time. XD As soon as I'm able to get some pictures from Yuki's visit, I'll post a few in one of my future updates. There are also some other things that I don't feel like mentioning right now, but I'll include them next time! One will make fans of the most adorable Sanrio character
extremely happy. :D