Part 6 - Almost Caught Up

So today they told us the rules on computers and stuff. We were divided into groups. About 16 people today, 12 tomorrow, 6 the next day, and 3 the last. So I get my computer registered tomorrow, but we did go visit a computer lab to get our school accounts set up with passwords so I emailed my parents and checked gaiaonline.com and facebook to see if anyone was thinking I’d died or anything. I had emailed home from the Apple Store but I hadn’t done anything else because I had been using a little iPod touch and it was hard. Apparently I also misspelled my dad’s email address on accident. I’m thinking it auto-corrected me and put hugging instead of huggins maybe. I don’t know.

Japanese keyboards are awkward to use. The space and back keys are really tiny so I kept missing and hitting keys that made me start typing in Japanese characters instead. So I frequently had to go back and correct it and switch it back again.

After that, we went to the cheaper cafeteria on campus for the first time. It was finally open, sort of. We went at 11am and it opened at 11:30 so we sat down and waited, then went through and placed and order. I don’t know what I got. It was like… pickled cabbage with pork or something, and… something green. It was good though. I got a bowl of rice too, but it was plain so I dumped it on my other stuff and ate it all together. Someday I’ll go back around campus taking pictures of everything. I forgot today. So the following were taken by someone else.

(cafeteria and fancier cafeteria food displays)

After lunch was a campus tour around the library and gym specifically. We also went into the chapel and an auditorium. This is a Christian school, apparently, so that’s why there’s a chapel here. It all looks really cool, and today there were suddenly a ton of Japanese students back. Maybe their summer break is starting to end? They start classes a week or two after we do, and we start Friday.

(inside chapel and inside gym)

Um, Christian and a few others went to register their laptops ‘cause they’re in today’s group, and once they get back we’re going to look at phones and hopefully get one. The prepaid’s are 3000 yen for the phone, with the cheapest calling card also for 3000 yen. Then you can get unlimited texting (though to them it’s mailing, because they are actually just sending emails with their phones) for 300 yen. So a total of 6300 yen for a phone, which is about $63. The 300 ($3) is monthly and you just buy the phone cards as needed. We all figured we’d be mailing way more than calling so that’s why we’re getting the unlimited amount. If we discover we’re not really using it, we may cancel, but I really think we will. Anyway, a phone will also serve as a good clock. I’m using my iPod right now.

I’m just chilling in my room right now, cooling off and waiting for them to return with their working laptops to make me jealous. The air blows right on me so it gets cold pretty quickly after the initial cooling down. It actually cools off really quickly too, so we’re supposed to keep our AC off while we’re out of the room and it’s not really that big of a deal to follow that rule. We also can’t walk on the carpet with our shoes on, and that’s a little harder to adjust to. I need slip on shoes. We can’t enter the gym without shoes either.

Oh, we haven’t seen Brian all day and we’re kind of worried. Apparently he lost his key last night so he slept in Andres room. He slipped out early this morning and no one’s seen him since. We think he’s scouring the sands of the beach for his key. It’s $250 if we lose it because they have to replace the entire lock. I keep mine attached to me or my bag via a carabineer clip thing I took off my keyring at home.

It’s soooo humid here. We’re dying every day. The information packets we get are just used as fans while we’re walking around. The campus tour was brutal. But I’m so glad I’m here. The campus is awesome, the students are awkwardly nice, I’m getting to know people from all over the world, and everyone’s getting along super great.

Classes start Friday too and I’m ridiculously excited to start attending. I really want to learn Japanese most of all so I can have less awkward conversations with people and order food a bit less cluelessly. I’m really dependent right now.

Okay well, they finally came back and we went and tried to get phones but they wouldn’t let us without our alien registration confirmation. So we walked there for no reason. We returned, then went back out again for something… I’ve already forgotten what we did. No wait, I remember. It was volleyball.



Hung out until dinner time, picked up food at Sunny’s, and ate in the dorm kitchen.
It was Alecs’ birthday so everyone was going to the beach, and we’d decided not to go, but got pulled in anyway and headed off. It was pretty fun. We did that thing again where we chat up the locals and pictures end up taking place all around. But Alex left his bag up by the shelter instead of on the sand with us, and someone stole it… it had his passport, wallet, and room key in it. We filed a police report, but none of us really knew what to do. Brian also lost his room key so he’s just keeping his door open every day. I can’t even imagine. Um, after that we hung out in Christian’s room for a bit, watching some youtube videos. Jeremy showed us some from England and we showed him Double Rainbow, while Simon showed us a video of a guy jumping into a lake only to find it’d frozen over. Bed around 3am.