Tuesday, July 26, 2005
so much to write about so little time.

mood: x_x
listening to: the hum of the computer

I think I'll just pick up where I left off.

Sunday

We headed over to the new electronics store with and iPod for Rei in mind. I now know how different this family is from mine. They can somewhat spontaneously get their daughter an expensive item. I had to wait AGES and AGES for mine. When we got into the store...well, to make a long story short, Rei got another mp3 player instead of an iPod, and the family bought a $1000 digital camcorder. Just like that! O.O We were in the store for around 2 hours, too.

After leaving, we (unfortunately) headed for GOLF practice. Now, if you know me, you know that:

a) I hate golf
b) I cannot play golf for my life
c) I suck at MINI GOLF. What does that tell you??

Anyways, luckily it was just driving practice. I sucked. Rather badly, actually. Towards the end I started to get the hang of it though. Maybe it's because they actually let me use the DRIVER. o.O;

We golfed for a while, and then headed back home to take a quick change of clothing and then, naturally, headed out for a restaurant. I had a feeling by that time that I wasn't going to have any time to memorize my speech. Why? Because this family could stay in a restaurant for DAYS. I swear to you, when we have family dinners, we stay in the resturant for usually 2-3 hours.

It was a tempura restaurant. I was comforted by this. Well, I was at least until I was almost forced to eat fried shrimp head. The cook was like "it tastes like cracker!" in English. I was like, in my head "YEAH, A CRACKER WITH FEELERS AND EYES YOU FREAK!!" I gave them to my Host Madre. I almost had to eat the head of a fish, too, since it was literally the entire fish fried (it was small). However, I just ate up to the neck area, and put the heads down. I told my host mom that in America we don't eat heads.

After that though, it was pretty much smooth sailing. =)

We got back home around 11. I knew I was just going to have to wing the whole speech thing the next day. Oh well.

Monday

Naturally I woke up later than I wanted. However, I quickly got ready and headed out for what was my last day at I.C. Nagoya. Also my last day of seeing the Italians and Hong Kong people. Which made me sad, since I really liked Italian Cool Guy.

I found my textbook and electronic dictionary, which gave me much relief. I also scribbled down a romanized version of my speech on a piece of paper to read off of. I tried memorizing it, but I knew that there was no hope.

Soon, the teachers ushered us all out into the hallway, and we then made our way to another building, which happened to be the old crappy building in which we had that one class with Airheaded-But-Nice&Cute Sensei the first week of school. In the building was a small room with seats and a podium. We practiced our speeches, and learned a song that we were going to sing *cougheyeahrightIasifIllsingcough* Then it was lunch break. I headed out with Quiet Korean One (for lack of a better name), Queen of Hearts, and Rainbow Girl. We went to the SCoco conbini and then we took purikura together. We got back just in time for the graduation thing.

We got ourselves seated and then we recieved our certificates by class. Then, we gave our speeches. There were 30 total. I was number 14. I did OK, but I wrote too small, so I had to hold my small paper to my face in order to see, LOL. I'll post my speech up later, for those interested. I think I spoke too fast, too. It was kind of distracting though, because LORNE's host mom brought with her a mentally retarded girl who kept making strange noises pretty much the entire commencement.

After the speech there was some other stuff. We got back our hankerchiefs that we made at Arimatsu ages ago, and we sang the song. I noticed during my speech that Rei was filming with the new camera, so during the song I managed to stand right behind Kind-of-Tall, hidden from sight. YES. VICTORY.

After the graduation, I left pretty quickly with Rei and Host Madre. Instead of heading home like I thought we were (I was feeling a bit below par for some reason), we headed to Takashimaya. Why? I do not know. We went to this extrodinarily lame Universal Studios thing where you walked through this little Jurassic Park and E.T. thing into this area where you could get your picture taken with Snoopy, etc. They had this thing called the BREAKMASTER or something like that. I forget. But it was like this "ride" thing. I supposed it was supposed to be one of those, you know, virtual rides where you sit/stand on the moving thing and there is movie playing in front of you and you feel like you're moving or something. Host Madre said that it was about firefighters or something. Well, I was SO wrong. We litterally walked in, stood on this metal piece of scrap, and watched 2 doors fly open, a ladder drop down, and a bucket get pushed out, and then the floor made a slight shaky quake. And that was IT. I almost laughed out loud. It was possibly the STUPIDEST THING EVER CONSTRUCTED. It was SO LAME. What made it even funnier was that there were people actually waiting in LINE for this crap. UGH.

After that experience, we headed up to the twin tower observatory thing to get the good view. We rode in this really big elevator. Then, we saw the Nagoya Castle made of sugar and stuff on display in the Marriot, and then we went for an afternoon desert. I had a banana parfait, Rei had a mango parfait, and Host Madre had this fruit tart thing. It was trés good. While we ate, we talked about my fellow AFSers, and who stuck out in their minds. What I heard was pretty much BLASPHEMY.

1. They said Seamus looked cool and he looked like Matt Damon. UM...NO. I told them that Seamus was a self-absorbed, arrogant asshole (well, not really, but I told them that he was arrogant), and he DOES NOT AND I REPEAT, DOES NOT LOOK LIKE MATT DAMON. First I look like Dakota Fanning, and now he looks like Matt Damon? I don't think so. Just because we are white doesn't mean we look like white famous people. GEEZ. During his speech (or right before) he put down his sunglasses to look all cool. What an idiot. I thought that was the stupidest thing I had ever seen. Why would you put down your sunglasses during a SPEECH? And it was indoors! And it was cloudy outside! Why do you even HAVE your sunglasses?

2. They LIKED Fanny Pack!!! HOLY MOTHER OF CRAP! I told them that he was really creepy, and that I pretty much hated him. They kept on saying that he looked like he tried so hard, blah blah blah. Well, I have to give him that. But then I went on this rant about how annoying and creepy he is. And then Host Madre was like "He is a little strange boy" in English. And I nearly cracked up because first of all, the way she said it was very funny. Then I was like "UM...A LITTLE???"

Anyways, that was blasphemy.

We then returned home. It was the last time I ever used my subway pass. ;_; I was trés sad.

By the time we got home it was around 4:30 or 5:00. I pretty much read my Sailormoon manga (in Japanese, I feel so proud) and watched TV the entire time. We also rewatched the speeches on tape. I looked/sounded/was/is so bad. That was pretty much it.

Now for today.

-Erin