Hello everyone. It's been a while. I've been crazy busy and whenever I've had free time I've been studying like mad for a major Japanese test I have this Sunday. I'll probably fail:) Oh well. There are more important things in life than good grades. So I wrote a list of things I want to talk about because I knew I'd forget something, but then I went and lost the list! So typical. Let me try to remember what I've been doing, and what's coming up. Umm. Well, I had to give a speech in front of my class. Wait, no, I don't want to think about that. Let's just say that I'd rather be a hermit for the rest of my life than have to give another speech. But afterwards both the boys and girls in my class played dodgeball together, and that improved my mood greatly. It was soooo funny. At first I was all serious until I realized that even if I was standing right next to a guy on the other team who had the ball they still wouldn't try to hit me. So I stopped trying to avoid them and just stood there. I later discovered that if I stood there and smiled everyone would pass me the ball, even if they were on the opposite team. Needless to say, my team won. But seriously, it was so funny, I kept cracking up and actualy missed catching the ball sometimes. :) Yup. That was my exciting dodgeball experience. Another school (not experience) thingy that I find amusing is the music they play during lunch. It's so random. (I just sort of quoted a tv show, did anyone get it?) For instance, today they played Backstreet Boys and music from the Nutcracker, as well as a traditional Japanese song. It's always such a weird mix of music.  Something that's really big in Japan is one day group travel. You pay a set amount of money and travel in a group. It's like a field trip for grown ups. Anyways, I'm telling you this because I went on one with my host parents last weekend. Which is why I didn't blog. I really couldn't see the appeal of it. It's the kind of thing that I find most annoying. I sat in a bus filled with people, and we drove hours to get to this little waterfall and to see "autumn colors" and then went and had dinner at an airport. An airpost, for cryin' out loud. But what really annoyed me was how scheduled it was. The bathroom breaks, snack breaks, everything was scheduled to a minute level. I felt like I was in preschool again. They even had a designated "nap time" in which they "recommended" that we should sleep. Yargh. But I ended up getting a "Doraemon" keychain, so it's all good.  So students at my school are testing this week, and instead of me getting any time off,  I have to ride the train for an hour to get to school, have one Japanese lesson, and then ride the train for an hour and a half back. It'll be like that Thursday, Friday, and Monday. I don't really mind, except I was planning to finally hang out with some friends those days and now I can't. Boooo. OK, now I need to discuss something positive. I have an AFS meeting next Sunday. Yup. Can't really embellish on that, I don't know any details. Oh, and winter break starts on the 23rd!!! That'll be nice. And then New Year's, which is going to be so much fun. Hrm, nothing else to talk about. My life here really isn't that exciting. Anyways, I'm going to school for an hour tomorrow, so I have to go to bed. Laters.