A new experience every day

Zach and Blake have good fitting slippers

After our first couple of days here with cooler, rainy weather the heat is starting to pick up. It was significantly more humid and hot yesterday and it continues today. The students have found that fans are a necessity to keep cool. Everyone continues to do well, experiencing new things every day. The first few days here every meal has been Japanese. Miso soup and rice for breakfast. Bento box for lunch. Japanese curry or some other variety of a Japanese dish for dinner. It was a welcome surprise to have pizza and fried chicken for dinner last night but just with every other meal it was not the typically american pizza; one of the pizzas was a miso pizza and another was a blueberry pizza. The students have also enjoyed frequent trips throughout the day to the vending machine to try all the different kinds of beverages.

Our main meeting spot is the tatami room, where we can rest during the day if we get tired. Every morning we all meet here and share our stories from the night before. We like to hear what everyone did with there host families, what we had for dinner, what we ate for breakfast, the challenges of the language barrier and other things that come up. Some of the highlights that have been shared include; making gyoza and eating more than 30 of them (Blake), going to the 100 yen store (KK), eating at McDonalds (Katie and KK), doing fireworks (Zack and Curtis) and experiencing the squaty potty toilets (all females).