happy new year!

ok, so what's been happening?
well, i've been working, xmas and nye are now finished, and i'm starting to get my head around the fact that i'll be going to japan in 21 days and 23 hours! :D

xmas was good, but fairly quiet. usually, my mum's brothers are in adelaide so we'd have afternoon tea/dinner with them, as well as mum's parents, but this year, they're both overseas, so we had my mum's parents for lunch and afternoon tea instead. i got some good stuff, including some money, a 4GB memory card for my camera, a laptop case, some hugo boss shirts and some PS3 games, among other things. so all in all, a great haul, if i don't say so myself! :P

i'm not sure if iv'e written about work before, but i'll do it again anyway. for three weeks, a group of 10 japanese highschool students are living in host families in adelaide, intensively learning english. during the day, they have classes and excursions to various touristy things around adelaide. so when they go on these excursions, i and one other person join them. really, all i'm doing is facilitating english conversation with them, while being a tourist in my own town! haha the kids are really nice and polite, and the pay is much better than at previous jobs i've had, so i really enjoy it! it's exhausting though, especially when we went to Glenelg (the most popular and accessible beach in adelaide) and it was 40˚C. the sand was almost burning my feet!

actually, i sort of have two jobs. once a week, i also tutor a family friend's kid in japanese. he's in the year below me, and isn't going too well in japanese, so i'm sort of helping him to try and bump up his knowledge before he gets back to school in about a month.

NYE was great. i was planning to be going only to a family friend's place, where another family would also be. we're all scotch families, and the ages of the kids all roughly match up. so after dinner, us three eldest kids went to another party in unley. i had a great time welcoming in 2010! :D although, i did sort of hit my finger on a fan though, and there's a blood blister on it now, which isn't that great, but otherwise, i think everyone had a good time.

rotary wise, i finished the first draft of my presentation, and showed it to my rotary club, with honorary members being the mayor of marion (a local council mayor) and a parliament representative, among many other rotarians and their spouses. otherwise, i saw caity and trephina at the house that caity's currently looking after, which was great fun; and we went to a rotex bbq thing as well. while dutch liquorice may not be my ideal lolly of choice, it was fun to hear about other people's exchanges.

i've also been emailing my host brother a bit; and i'm able to understand almost all of what he writes, which is great! :D

btw, how on earth are you supposed to work out what should and what shouldn't be packed?!?! it's so difficult trying to pack up your entire life for a year! :P

time to do a blog post then…

so… what's been happening?
well i love holidays. a lot. i'm really not sure how i ever lived doing school work everyday. also, we get our results back in about a week. that's kind of scary… up until a couple of days ago, i wasn't worried at all; but now i'm quite nervous, worrying about what i'll get. but i did some estimations of marks, and that sort of calmed me down quite a bit. so all is fairly good. :)

rotary wise? well, on sunday, there was the final briefing, where we, with our parentals, were given lectures on various things, such as travelling/packing, quarantine, insurance, mental and physical health, host families, etc. it was actually fairly interesting, and we also got our blazer and rotary rugby top. the rugby top's a good size, but the blazer seems quite big! apparently i'm gonna become a porker while i'm overseas and put on several kilos, but i still don't think that will cover how much bigger the blazer seems compared to any other jacket / blazer i have! :D

This week, i've also got a huge amount of info from rotary about my exchange. Apparently, i've changed high school, and I am now going to Sekiuchi high school, not the technical college like i previously thought. The photo to the right is my new highschool! i'm really excited about it. it's a coed highschool, started in 2004. Apparently, the translation google gave me of the school's motto was: Creative self-worship… so i'm a little unsure about that… :) but otherwise, i've got pretty much no info about the school, like how many people etc. but it should be good! i'm really excited to go, i can't wait!

Currently, it's only 44 days (i accidentally typed in 33 days just then, and it looked like such a small amount of days!!! but that'll be really soon! aahh!) until i go, and 16 days until xmas. the year's almost over! i can't believe it really… it should only be about july, not mid december already!

Also, i sent an email off to my first host family! it was predominantly in japanese, with two lines in english of things i couldn't say in japanese. :) but they haven't responded yet, so i'm stuck here, waiting for a reply. Rotary has only told me their address, but it hasn't been said whether i have any host brothers/sisters. I've also been told of my counsellor's name, so i guess i should make some contact with him too! :P

wow… this is a dis-jointed post if i ever saw one… hope you enjoyed it! :P

PS: how am i supposed to make a 20 minute keynote about my life by the 21st of december?!? not likely, me thinks! :P