Things I've Learned:

My "Mamasan" is treating me well. Haha, I don't call her that, but that's what they call her on I Survived a Japanese Gameshow. Speaking of which, my Mamasan doesn't know what a gameshow IS! I have a hard time explaining things sometimes. "Gameshow...um...a show...TV...with games?" "Hmm....sports show?" Or "Hurricane...big storm?...rain?...rain...lots of rain...rain, rain, rain...flood?...water...lots of water..." "Swimming?"Haha...no, no swimming...water...um...in the house!" "OOOooooh!"

I had my first Japanese class today, and she was planning on giving us a test over hiragana tomorrow!! That's one of the alphabets we learned over the summer, but we've all forgotten it all now. She quizzed us quickly on the board when we told her we didn't think a test tomorrow was a good idea, and I guess she agreed. Now we have until Friday. I checked out two children's books in the library today and read them with my Mamasan. She's a 2nd and 3rd grade teacher, so she's pretty good at that sort of thing. I sat there with my books and the alphabet and sounded out every single word while she helped by pointing them out sometimes. Then she'd explain what it meant. Surprisingly, Japanese children's books do NOT end happily most of the time. They either end sad or just...kind of leaving you wondering. The first book I picked looked harmless. It was about a Teddy Bear. But each page the bear gets more and more torn apart until the last page it's just a mangled mess missing a head and its eye is sitting next to the body with the words "I wish I could love". All the pages were like one person talking and what was happending to the bear so, something along the lines of "Get revenge", "Hateful" and "Be strong", "Forced attack". My Mamasan and I didn't like that one so much... I did like Kore Kore Kore, or "Roll Roll Roll" about a bunch of colored balls rolling around...up stairs, on a red road, down a hill...hahaha! Half the pages were just "kore, kore, kore", "kore, kore". A kindergardener could have read it faster than me. Either way, I just want to do well on that test, and the teacher said she hopes we can read by Friday.

Other than that, it's just the normal adventures of trying to get to and from school everyday by the city bus and trying to figure out how I am expected to take a shower. We really confused the bus driver by jumping the gun pushing the button to let him know we wanted to get off at the next stop. I live near two other OC people so we ride the same bus, and Makenna hit it one stop too early our first day riding home alone, which made the bus driver look around wondering why no one was getting off when he stopped. He just laughed and apologized over and over and he smiled and kept going. As far as showers are concerned, apparently you take your shower and when you are all cleaned off you relax in the bathtub full of hot water. Luckily my family lets me go first, so I don't have to sit in the water they just sat in...since they don't drain it between people. My family actually has two houses - one was my dad's parents' house before they died 2-3 years ago. Now the dad spends the nights in that house, which is strange to me, but I guess that's not completely strange here for couples to not sleep in the same rooms at least. Houses may be pushing it. Haha!