I have a host father and mother (Yoshiyuki and Miki, respectively) and a 16 year old host sister. My host parents have suitably vague occupations: my dad is a "company employee" and my mom is an "instructor". I'm going to be living in the Aoba district of a city called Sendai (仙台), which has about a million people. The prospect of living here excites me greatly.
I actually called my host family yesterday. It was pretty nice; we talked for about 20 minutes, introducing ourselves and all that. My host mom asked me how tall I was, and, after getting my dad (who's German) to estimate my height in centimeters, she was relieved when I said I was about 172 cm. If I had been much taller, they would have gone out and bought a new futon for me to sleep on. awww yeah Japanese hospitality. Another interesting part of the phone call was when I talked to the 21 year old daughter who is studying abroad in Minnesota. It went something like this:
Her: どうやって日本語を勉強したの？
Me: 独学で二年間死に物狂い勉強してきた。
Her: (in a perfect Midwestern accent) Sweet! That's pretty awesome that you've come so far with Japanese in such a short time.
Me: ...
It turns out she's really good at English.
No fear, however. She's returned to the US already, leaving me to bask in the Japanese environment with the rest of the family. I'm really looking forward to going truly AJATT. Since that call I've been packing blah blah blah.
In other news, I've spent the last couple of days hanging out with friends, which has been a lot of fun. I'll miss everyone while I'm in grorious nippon.
Well, sorry about the brevity of this post, but I actually have to get up at 1:30 tomorrow in order to get ready and to go to Charlotte to catch my plane. From there to Washington, Washington to San Francisco, stay in San Jose for 3 days for orientation, and then off to Tokyo! Feelin' pretty excited right now.
Her: どうやって日本語を勉強したの？
Me: 独学で二年間死に物狂い勉強してきた。
Her: (in a perfect Midwestern accent) Sweet! That's pretty awesome that you've come so far with Japanese in such a short time.
Me: ...
It turns out she's really good at English.
No fear, however. She's returned to the US already, leaving me to bask in the Japanese environment with the rest of the family. I'm really looking forward to going truly AJATT. Since that call I've been packing blah blah blah.
In other news, I've spent the last couple of days hanging out with friends, which has been a lot of fun. I'll miss everyone while I'm in grorious nippon.
Well, sorry about the brevity of this post, but I actually have to get up at 1:30 tomorrow in order to get ready and to go to Charlotte to catch my plane. From there to Washington, Washington to San Francisco, stay in San Jose for 3 days for orientation, and then off to Tokyo! Feelin' pretty excited right now.
Parents, Susi and Ashley all got up and bravely drove to CLT to see Max off. Amazing how many other people were at the airport at that horrible time of the morning!
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