A very scary Halloween!

So today is Halloween and so far, it's been a very scary one! Last night, I was getting pain right in the place where my appendix is. I told my host mom and she said that we'd keep an eye on it. I went to bed and when I woke up, it felt better but soon after I got up and walking around the pain came back. I told my host mom that it was still hurting and she said that I should go to the hospital. Now, in Japan it's completely normal to go to the hospital even if you just have a head ache, but it was a big deal for me. I got to the hospital and I took my temperature. That's right, I took my temperature. In Japan, they give you a thermometer to measure your temperature while you're waiting and then once you're done you just walk into the treatment area and give it to a nurse. It's weird how you can just walk into any treatment area. Also, they take their temperature under your arm instead of under your tongue so that's different. It turned out that I had a little bit of a fever and so they started getting afraid that I had appendicitis. I went into the doctor's office where he pushed on my stomach a bit and he thought, too, that it might be appendicitis. After that, I went and got blood drawn. That wasn't bad but I don't think they even tested it or anything. Once that was over, I had to go and get an ultrasound. This wasn't very fun because it took about an hour to do and it hurt when they had to press on my stomach. Although, it was cool getting to see the inside of my stomach even though I didn't know what I was looking at. When that was finally over, I went back to the doctor and he said that I didn't have appendicitis but that my intestine was inflamed. I couldn't really understand why it was inflamed but they said it's okay and that I should get pretty soon. They gave me a ton of medicine to take which kind of sucks, though. In Japan, medicine only takes care of one symptom and so I have to take four different medications three of which I have to take three times a day. So that's been my day so far. I also want to talk about what I did on the weekend. On Saturday, I went with my family and Alicia's host family to go and eat ramen and go shopping. The ramen was really good although it was a bit difficult to eat. On Sunday, I had to go with my Japanese tea ceremony club to a special tea ceremony event. All of the women there were dressed in beautiful kimonos and it was really fun because we got to make tea using all of the traditional pots, spoons, bowls, and chopsticks. At first, we went to one huge tatami room and that's where we had to seeza and bow to a scroll. Seeza is the proper Japanese sitting poster which luckily, I can do. It's considered special if you're able to seeza because it's a little painful. Like I said, I can do it but after about an hour, it starts to hurt real bad. After we were done with looking at the scroll, we moved into a beautiful tatami room. It had beautiful lamps and screens and there was a gorgeous Japanese garden out the window. There, we were served the tea which actually takes quite a while. There are many, many steps in Japanese tea ceremony and so everything takes a long time. After that, we moved to a separate room where we were served snacks. My tea ceremony teacher was in that room and it was really fun to see her all dressed up in her kimono. Once that was over, my friends and I went to karaoke, purikura, lunch, and shopping. It was really fun being able to walk around town with no plans and to be able to do some sightseeing.  When my friends and I were walking back to the subway station, we were crossing the street and the car waiting for us to cross honked its horn, rolled down the window, and asked where I was from. I still feel weird when people that I don't know come up and talk to me but my friends said that it's normal in Japan to do that. So that's all I have to talk about. Happy Halloween everyone!