Fun, fun, fun!

I've been having so much fun here! Yesterday, I got done with my first week of school. The first two days, I had regular classes but Wednesday and Thursday we had the sports festival. It was so much fun! Everyone gets together and plays sports for two whole days and at the end, there's a big ceremony. For the ceremony at the end, I had to prepare a speech in Japanese and English to do in front of the entire school. I was so scared, but it ended up being just fine. When I got up on the stage, everyone was screaming, cheering, and of course yelling "kawaii!" which means cute. So embarrassing! But once I was done, I felt awesome and everyone told me I did a really good job. Even my teacher said I did a lot better than she expected! Friday was just a regular day, but it was still really fun. I'm already part of a group of girls and everyone is super nice to me. Although I'm obviously very different from everyone, people have accepted me and have really welcomed me into their school. Another really nice thing is that I've become really good friends with another exchange student from Rotary. Her name is Alicia and she's from New York. We're both VERY similar and so it's really nice to have someone that completely understands what you're going through. Today, I went with Alicia and her host parents to go on a gondola ride up a mountain so you could see all of Sapporo. It was so beautiful! Unfortunately, I didn't know what we were doing so I didn't bring my camera. It's all good, though. I took pictures with my mind! After that, we went to where Olympic ski jumping was held! It was amazing! We got to go on a ski lift up the ski jump and it was crazy to look at just how big those jumps are. They're absolutely massive! After that, we went to this chocolate factory and had lunch. It was delicious! I don't know what I had, but it was really good. Once we were done having lunch, we went to Alicia's house to have dinner with both of our host families. Our host moms are sisters and so Alicia and I are host cousins! How cool is that? I think it's super cool. Tomorrow, Alicia are going to go explore Sapporo by ourselves. I'm really excited because I haven't really had a chance to just walk around and take pictures. And Mom, don't worry. I know what I'm doing. I have a phone and I know how to use the subways so I'll be fine! I really like how I'm usually busy everyday because that means I get to keep experiencing more and more things. Because of this, there isn't a moment where I'm not having fun. I absolutely love it here.