こんにちは！

So it's been roughly four days since I have arrived in Japan. I would have written a a post when I arrived but I was dead tired. I had been up 24 plus hours but I forced myself to stay up until around 10 pm in Japan's time to get myself into the time zone. Surprisingly I don't have any jet lag except the day I arrived. I woke up at a decent time the next day.

When I arrive I met the volunteer student, Fuka, that was suppose to pick me up. Thankfully I arrived early and was able to catch my meeting time. There were about five other exchange students that arrived with two other volunteer students. Once it was four o'clock we took our leave from the airport and took a bus to Osaka Station. The bus ride was roughly an hour long, it was very difficult to not fall asleep on the bus since it was so quiet and the ride was quite smooth. When we arrived at Osaka Station in Umeda, we hopped onto a train ride which was another long. But then we arrived. I was the only girl in the group going to Dormitory Ryokuchi Koen which left Fuka and I to drag my luggage up to the dormitory.

Ryokuchi Koen is a nice dormitory. It's small but that isn't a surprise since Japan is known for the small space. The manager Fujiwara is very nice but he barely speaks any English which does make it hard to communicate. But there are a few girls whose Japanese skills who are far enough to hold a normal conversation and helped us all out. He helped point out where everything is and all the rules. And there are tons of rules, but nothing terrible. The only thing that is bothersome is the curfew we have. At 11:00 pm we'll be locked out of the dormitory because the key pad turns off. If we don't come back and we don't tell Fujiwara where we are we'll get in trouble thus making it hard to stay out with other exchange students or Kansai students in general since they don't have curfews.

Julie and Ellie found me during the explanations during the tour of the dormitory. I think they startled Fujiwara and Fuka since they yelled out me name and ran forward for a hug. But it was wonderful seeing them after all summer.

On Friday, we went to the campus to do the first stage of orientation. Everyone was split into groups with two group leaders that were the Japanese volunteer students. Fuka was actually in our group, and the other girl was Mai. Both are super nice, I really hope we can continue seeing them in the future. During orientation we were told that we were biggest group of international students that Kansai has ever had, 64 of us. This does explain why we had to be moved to Ryokuchi Koen because they had literally less than half exchange students last year. I think it was a big surprise for everyone. The orientation was long since it was explained in both English and Japanese which took time but it was worth it.

Saturday, yesterday, was our placement test. No one was happy during this time. The only thing I will say about the test was that it was oral, writing, and an interview. It was just not very fun, and I really don't want to think about it. But later the night we went to go drinking. Julie and I were thinking about leaving earlier before we even got there because both me and her were just not really in the mood to be out. But that changed when we got there. We went to an American theme restaurant which was very comfortable.

We were sat in the middle of the restaurant so we could see all the other tables. On one side of us there was a group that looked like there was a birthday party for. There was a birthday (three in fact, all around the restaurant) but the group was actually the basketball club from Kansai Daigaku. It was fun to watch them though, they were doing drinking games and eventually we started clapping along when they would drink. I'm not sure how or when it happened but Ellie started talking to one of them and then Melissa, one of the residents in our dorm, started talking to him like she was drinking to pick a fight. It was quite the sight. Everyone from the basketball club were watching (more like the whole restaurant) and us watching them as they hovered over us. She was trying to get his Mixi (basically Japanese ver. of facebook) and he agreeing. Then he would ask us and she would respond, it was just quite a sight that can't really be explained in words.

But after that the ice was kinda of broken. Both parties started mingling with each other, sadly it was to late in the night since we had to leave because of our curfew. I wish we could have stayed longer but maybe there'll be another time.