Day 4: First Day of School

Today was the first day of school! It ended up only being a half day because they were taking exams so we got out at 1pm. It started with my host dad waking me up at 6am to get ready to go to school. We left the house at 7:05am. From 6-7 I got ready, ate breakfast, etc. Here's a picture my host mom took of Yuho and I  right before we left for school:

The school is really strict about uniform skirt length. I got in trouble for my skirt being too short today, so I'll have to somehow fix it for later. Anyways, we left at 7:05am to get to school at 8:10. Usually we walk to the train station but we were running late so my host mom drove us. Then we took 3 trains and then walked for about 10 minutes and ended up (finally) at school. I met up with the other 2 exchange students, Drew and Max, and the Headmaster and Head of the Exchange Program before school started in the EP room to go over our speeches. At 8:45am, we headed outside to where Assembly is. There are 2,000 students so they have to have it in a big open space outside. After the principal and a few other people spoke, they introduced us and it was time to make my speech! In the end, my 4-sentence "speech" was no big deal and I didn't have any trouble. That didn't mean I wasn't really nervous before-hand though! After we said our speeches, we sat down with the other students and finished Assembly. Then the other exchange students and I headed back to the EP (Exchange Program) room. Then, a teacher came and showed us around a little bit and fitted us for our PE uniforms. Then she took us back and we hung out for a while in the EP room. About an hour later, the head of the school came in and told us about our schedules and what we would do everyday in general. It turns out that the rest of this week and next week, we are only going to have Japanese lessons in the EP room all day until we can figure out where all of our other classrooms are and get accustomed to the (huge) school. It has 8 floors and everything is in Japanese so it's really easy to get lost! At 1pm, the other students got done with their exams and my host sister came and got me and we headed to the train station. She had another friend with her and they said they wanted to take me to an Italian restaurant by Q's Mall so that's where we went next. I forgot to take a picture there, but it was a pretty good restaurant! I got spaghetti and tried Japanese "pepsi-cola" for the first time. It's really good, and tasted more like a mix between Sprite and Coke. After eating, we decided we were tired and wanted to go home. Also, Yuho and Mamisu (her friend) have exams tomorrow again so they needed to study. So we took the train home and here I am now! My host parents will get home around 7pm and I'll shower while they prepare dinner and we'll eat at 8:30 and then I'll head on to bed. All in all, today was a good (and exhausting) day. Tomorrow I have my first Japanese lessons so I'm excited to finally be able to start communicating better with my family. Now I'm about to go practice piano because last night my host dad gave me a lot of different sheet music and helped me practice it. He wants me to keep practicing everyday because (like my real dad) he loves to hear the piano being played. I can only imagine what tomorrow will bring- another adventure for sure!
-AC