Another Long Day

Today I went to get my something-or-other foreign registration card. There was a lot of sitting and waiting, and a lot of broken conversation with my language partners. I guess this doesn't really make sense if I don't start from the beginning, though, so let's see how much I can write before I pass out from exhaustion.

Yesterday I had my first day of orientation where I met my two "language partners." They're supposed to be around to help me practice Japanese later in the year. They're both really fun (two girls) and they don't speak very much English. I'm taking them not speaking English as a good thing because it really forces me to talk in Japanese, no matter how awful my Japanese is right now. After they showed me around campus, they rode the bus home with me so I could find my way (which was awesome on my first day).

This morning, my host dad drew me about 10 maps of how to make it to campus, so I was able to successfully trek there on my own. It's a pretty simple route, really, because I just take one bus for a while, and then walk straight along a street until I get to the campus. (Well, that's one route at least -- as my host dad explained to me, there are about a hundred ways to get there that all take about the same amount of time.)

I sat through orientation classes all morning, then in the afternoon I met with my language partners again, we ate lunch, and they took me to register as an alien and get my health insurance. The bus ride to the building was long, and we had to wait for about 45 minutes total after filling out a bunch of forms, but we finally got everything done. Honestly, by this point I could have fallen asleep on the sidewalk anywhere, but I somehow didn't.

So I had some fun conversations during our waiting periods. They taught me how to tell people that I have absolutely no sense of direction, which will undoubtedly be extremely useful. I learned some other random stuff, but I truly can't remember it all right now.

I guess my exhaustion from walking everywhere combined with the fact that I'm coming down with a cold has made it hard for me to take everything in. I feel a little blah. But I know that I'll get better, so I'm not extremely worried; it's just inconvenient.

But anyways, after I got home I got to play legos with Jion (the youngest) while my host dad was working and my host mom was driving the other two kids around. It was definitely the highlight of my day. I don't really understand Jion a lot of the time, but it's fun to talk with him because if I don't understand something he doesn't care and he just moves on to talking about something else. We built a zoo with legos, which he destroyed with a truck, then he told me I was tall and asked if I fit in the tub when I took a shower. There was a lot of other random conversation -- most of which I didn't understand -- but I'm sure half of what he said probably doesn't even make sense in Japanese, either, so it's okay.

Alright, there's tons more I should/could write, but I'm suuuper tired. I apologize if this post is awful, but like I explained earlier, I'm not at 100% (or even 75%) right now. Oh well.