Sutorenjaa In Japan

Fun Times with the Adpoted 'Rents

9:45am: Jarred awake by poundings on my leg… my hung over buddy, Virginia, reminds me that we need to get up to catch a bus home. I mutter something about leaving later but decide that due to plans I have at noon, I probably shouldn’t sleep any longer. We gather our stuff and try to pull it together to depart from our oh-so-kind friend’s pad (Big Hands for Hiyadeh for letting us crash).
10am: We stumble out the door, Virginia doubled over in post-party nausea and I with broken feet from dancing and still wearing heels, throw on the shades (“WHY IS IT SO BRIGHT OUTSIDE?!) and proceeded to find the bus home.
12pm: FREAKIN’ FOREVER later, I arrived home (the bus took about 1.5 hours and the trolley to get to Virginia’s, where I parked my car, was 30 mins) in time to put on something a little decent, take a French shower and head out to my host family’s house.
1pm: Met up with the host family and grabbed a quick bite to eat (FOOD & WATER= SOOOO good). Did I mention I was an HOUR late? Yah. Great track record I’m making here… but I suppose some things will never change with me. Anyway, we ate and then dashed off to a host family party with other host families. It was ALL I could do not to fall asleep in the car. Cool thing I learned today: MANY cars have some sort of TV/ GPS in their car. You can input the phone number or address of the place you are looking for, or look it up in a directory and it will give you perfect directions. AND you can watch TV on it too. The best 2 parts are that you get multiple channels and it only turns on when the car is stopped (I guess they have similar laws as at home)… but its automatic! So stopped= TV, go= back to map. Awesome.
2:30pm: We got to the party, meet, greet and mingle. Other JETs were there with their host families, most were still hung over from last night’s festivities (if they made it at all!) but managed to put on a happy face. It was a pot luck so there were lots of good eats. After the eating each family performed some kind of little act. We had a hula dance, old MacDonald, 3 national anthems, a karate skit and MY family’s concluding song & dance number of Abraham’s children (it was new to me… and INCREDIBLY embarrassing). I felt a little stupid cause it’s a kid’s song and there are NO little children in my host family… so it was not really cute… just 3 adults doing this song. The shame. BUT my host mother really seemed to love the song & dance so, it was nice to see her happy (it was HER idea… and how could I turn down that smile!).
7pm: got home and prepped for bed. Took the longest bath ever. My dogs were KILLING me at that point and I needed to relax from some hard core rockin out (from Saturday’s party… NOT the host fam thing!).
10pm: Out like a light! First time I have been to bed “early” since July. Sleep is a beautiful thing.

posted by KidBach @ 1:03 PM