Sunday 1st February
Had rotary orientation today and it was nothing like our orientations back home and I felt really out of place and uncomfortable, mainly because I didn’t think about it before hand in a lot of ways I wore what is comfortable and warm and the level of formalness that was appropriate for our orientations in Australia and not thinking about the fact that it was a lot more likely to be much more formal here. And the other 2 had obviously thought about this as they were wearing their formal uniforms like what we wore when we arrived. Not only that but even still I completely forgot to take my name badge. And like a lot of rotary things will be this year I was the only female as Japanese Rotary is male only and there are only the 3 of us new in bounders to the district and 8 of us in total with only 3 girls in that mix. I was also fairly disappointed to learn that of the 8 in bounders there are the 3 of us Australians and the other 5 are from us and Canada. So, not nearly as a diverse group of people as we had in D9600 which was something I was looking forward to.
Orientation its self wasn’t at all bad I guess because D9600 had done so much with me before I left Australia I knew many of the rules already. But they went over some of the fine points which relate especially to Japan. And of course the fact that I’m not allowed to wear any jewelry to school, which I’m not entirely happy about having to take my cross off but anyway.
The other thing is I’m still not at all sure who my counselor here is supposed to be and yes I have asked and I have a name on a piece of paper but that is entirely no help to me what so ever at the present point in time.
And so people stop asking me yes there are things I miss about home already, but they aren’t vital things, and I’m enjoying myself here too much for them to really matter. I miss being warm I miss being able to wear the same cloths inside and out and not freeze or be stinking hot in one case. I miss having a fluent conversation about anything even those little petty things that would come up with a customer at work. I miss being hugged. Any of you who know me remotely well know I’m a huggy person and in general the Japanese society isn’t and as I am yet to make good enough friends with any of them or with any of the other exchange students a hug is something I have not received since saying goodbye to my family in Brisbane. So yeah I miss friends and family but I’m forming friendships over here so it’s not the contacts really it’s the intimacy of the contacts that I miss. I know that these things will most likely all seem very trivial to you and if you would have told me 2 weeks ago that a week into my exchange that they are the things I would miss I would have laughed at you. I mean I knew that I would miss friends and family at points thought the year I didn’t really think that it would come this soon but alas it has.
I am happy here I really am and I am very excited about the fact that I start my school life here tomorrow, I have to be at school by 8:15 so I have to leave home at about 7:45 which is a lot earlier than I have been getting up so I should really give myself an early night tonight though I have been saying that for the last couple of days as I keep feeling really bad about getting up so late but with all that I’m doing I am getting really tired.
Monday 2nd February
so I started school today and ahh what to say, it was in most ways a fabulous day I really enjoyed being around people my own age and I felt like I could finally talk in Japanese and not be judged for what I got wrong which seems really weird I know but I think that they can all appreciate how hard it is for me and that I am really trying and that is what they care about not that I may forget the odd particle or put to words around the wrong way in a sentence pattern but it will get there, although I must day I am now doing myself introduction without any thought like it completely fluent I'm not even really thinking as I'm saying it what the English equilievent is just that I'm doing my intro. All the people here think that saying Sharnelle is very difficult so everyone is calling me Nelly, except the few teachers which are doing for me what they do for all the others in my class and calling me by my last name but again they are saying it wrong… ahh when will people learn.
So I'm in year 1 class 2 so basically the equlivent to our grade 10 back home but I'm fine with that. Especially as it is almost the end of the school year and then I will move up to 2nd year with my class. The subjects I had today were history, home ec (which I swear was actually commerce but anyway) and then math’s which was sooo easy but then again its yr 10 and I think the work was stuff we did about half way through yr 11 but regardless it was stuff I had previously done. It was then lunch time. After lunch we had English which I found strange they are learning what I'm gonna call proper English but it’s not exactly what we use that and it’s American English so they spell things strangely. So if I start spelling thing the American way I'm sorry but it’s my schooling over here. This lead to a few interesting convos with the teacher about why they teach that way and not how we actually speak but it was really funny coz she herself can barely speak English just what she teachers.
Um just a few points about my school over here.
· Yes I have a shoe locker because you don’t wear your outside shoes inside and vice-versa we have shoe lockers at the student entrance to the school where you keep your other shoes
· I think it’s very odd that I walked to school watching the sun rise and home watching it set
And I went to school just in time for lessons and stayed about 40min after lessons finished to get a few other things organized.
· Not only are our classes numbered but so are we as the students within those classes. For example I am student 41 within my class
· Yes classes are that big mine with 41 students now that I'm in it
· Unlike in Australia where we the students move around to our different lessons the students have a room which we stay in and the teachers come to us. There are of course some exceptions to this like for home ec today we went to a different room and we will for science and pe lessons.
· The school doesn’t employ cleaners we the student body do it all ourselves. In a special time slot at the end of the day.
· The 3rd graders (seniors ) only have lessons in the morning and spend the afternoon at school doing self study to prepare for their exams
· School is all one building, well 2 but they have built in corridors between them. All the first years study on the 1st floor the 2nd year students on the 3rd floor and the 3rd year students on the second floor
· We eat lunch and spend lunch time in our classroom or in the other classrooms of our grade/ our friends