Being an older sister

So a few weeks ago, I changed to my last host family. I absolutely love them! But before I talk about them, I want to talk about the family I had before that. My third host family I only got to stay with for three weeks because my host mom was pregnant with her fourth child. For the first time in my life I got to be an older sister! Having there be two boys of 5 and 9 and a girl of 7 was quite the experience! The oldest boy's name is Reo, the girl's name is Sena, and the youngest boy's name is Rei. Rotary was thinking about putting me in a different house but I'm SO glad they didn't. The time I spent in that house was some of the best I've had on exchange. Because I don't have to do any work at school, I have a lot of free time and I think the kids really enjoyed taking advantage of that. We were ALWAYS playing. Crafts, card games, tickle fights, and hide and seek for hours. It was really fun being able to be with children so young because I don't get very many chances to do that. I was also very fortunate to have a family that wanted to take me out to other towns and places so I ended up going to Otaru which is famous for glass work and later to Noboribetsu which is famous for onsen. Noboribetsu was pretty far and so we stayed there for the weekend! It was really nice to have a weekend only for relaxing. We spent the whole time in yukatas (Japanese robes) and sitting in hot springs. The onsens in Noboribetsu are amazing! The hotel we stayed at had about 30 different baths you could soak in. Some are really hot, lukewarm, and some are even outside. Besides trips and playing all the time, another thing I really got to benefit from was the fact that everything spoken in that house was in Japanese. Every once in a while I wouldn't understand what the kids were saying to me and whenever that would happen, I'd most likely learn a new word or phrase. My mom and dad were the sweetest people and were always there to make me feel like one of their own! On my last night there, my mom and dad prepared this huge sushi platter themselves which was SO sweet of them. So I've been with my current family for a few weeks now and during that time, they had the baby! Today I was fortunate enough to go visit all of them and it was so much fun! It's a boy and his name is Kei! When I got to their house, all of the kids ran downstairs and started attacking me like I never had even left. For some reason, 3 other families came over (all with kids) and had dinner. It was actually really fun because hey, who wouldn't want about 500 kids tackling them? When everyone left I got to hold the baby and help give him a bath which was really fun! Currently, I'm on my spring break which is REALLY nice. It's giving me some time to get to know my family as well as relax a bit. In my current family, I have two sisters and a brother. My oldest sister lives in Tokyo and her name is Miho, my other sister's name is Miyu, and my brother who's close to my age is named Yodai. It's fun being able to joke around with them and do things we all want to do because we're all relatively close age wise. A few days ago, we got lost in this bowling alley and couldn't get out so that was something funny I won't forget. The school year ended so when I go back to school I'll be a second year. I'm really not that excited because I had to be put in the science classes instead of art because there weren't enough girls for the science classes. The one cool thing is that I have the same homeroom teacher! Tomorrow I'm hanging out with an exchange student from Australia and have to get up early so I'm off to bed! I'll update again as soon as I can!