Day 4: marine house camp- room w116-5:06 July, 2006

It is so hot in Japan! I wake up every morning sweating! In this room it is 80 degrees Fahrenheit. yesterday I woke up at 5:30ish. It gets light early here so it was almost full sun. I layed in bed untill about 6- when i got dressed, brushed hair,brushed teeth. then - as almost everybody else was up we took a walk between wake-up call and morning meeting at 7:00. morning meeting was fairly simple. they announced that those of us (Atlanta) who got in late last night would have orientation; we did exercises- just a little streach really ; and then they had people from 2 delegations introduce their country. yesterday a boy from california talked about watersports and a guy from australia talked about animals. after morning meeting we lined up and waited 10 minutes fro breakfast. we had fish, eggs, rice, tofu soup and a salad. i tried the soup and the fish and gagged. so i just ate the rice and salad(s) that everybody gave me (I HATE eggs.) at eight we came back to cleam our room but ended up playing monkey in the middle. at eight thirty we went to orietation. at orientation we went to "orientation hall" and were asked to point out important places and given reminders as to rules. we watched a video about the homestay. the video included Japanese customs and some rules. then we learned how to make our beds. we then had some freetime. we hung out in the sweltering hot playroom and did flower arranging and painted magnets. i retreated to our room to read. Ms Renea came and reminded us we had to practice "We go together" from grease for the whole big demonstation thing later on in the trip. we waited outside the practice room for the boys and when we got there we worked on the number for ages. we are not very good. when practice was over i came to our room to read. i walked down to the playhall and just hung out untill lunch at 12:40. lunch was undon noodles with rice, salad, and melon sherbert.after lunch we practiced again, twice then i went down to the playroom for a little bit. the playroom is a large circular room with a stage on one edge and games in the middle. soon i came back to the room and finished the 10th guardians of Ga'hoole book. at 3:00 we did a postcard and listened to a guy speak in japanese about etigami. we had a short break and ate dinner at 5:40. dinner was a chicken hamburger, rice, salad, and fruit cocktail. we had a short break and then took a bath. we take japanese baths, so in the bathroom there is a room where wetake off our clothesand then another room with a pool in the center and adn showers with stools around the edges. we shower then get in the pool which is aobut 2 ft deepadn just relax. we are not allowed to take anything (clothes included) into the bath. i find japanese bathing extremely relaxing. after taking a bath i just hung out in my room adn occasionally ding-dong ditched the boys. i listened to stories and helped stephanie make up one aobut "borbando boom" (orlando bloom) and "bailey booding" (haliey gooding) and "betany ban" (stephanie tan). finally i told the end of the peter pan story i started last night adn went to sleep. it is now nearly 6 am and haley is up as well as the leader so i will write more tonight.

Day #3 Marine house Camp, Room W116 Fukuoka, Japan- 7:14pm JST

I'm sorry i don't remember where i left off. But after we got to Chicago we ate lunch and exchanged our dollars for Yen. We followed- wait i said al this so... we ate "lunch" on the boeing 747 and tried to sleep. i was in the middle so i leaned on haley and put my feet on stepahnie's tray table. I got about an hour of sleep then and later a half hour. we landed but because we left chicago at lease an hour and a half late once at the Tokyo airport Amine, stephanie, haley and i got off. ms. renea was to follow with ryan and william. Rayan was not feeling well and william was just slow. we did not know that there were 2 doors on the 747- the four of us used one and ms renea and company used the other. ms renea went on to customs withoutus- well we contacted ms renea with the help of an airport official. we rushed to customs only to find we had the wrong forms! we quickly filled out the forms aadn passed through customs, baggage check, security and onto a bus all in record time. we boarded the plane. at this point we were LATE! but the flight wenr smoothly and i slept after a few rounds of blackjack. we arrived at camp after having our picture taken and riding a bus through Fukuoka. Japan smells very clean with a hint of salt. Fukuoka is a lot of ligths and very pretty. we were introduced to camp and after a light snack, bath- a few stories, lulabies and much controversy as to wheather orlando bloom is hot or not we went to bed. in my dorm are haley and stephanie, from atlanta, Elsie and Maia, from new Zealand, and Joo and Faree, from the maldives.

General Info

Hey guys,
Last summer i went to Japan i had an awesome time.
General inforrmation aobut my trip and who was with me:
I was going to the asian-pacific children's convention. AKA the APCC
with me went:
Ryan: the tall young guy (he was like early 11s, the rest of us were later 11s)
Amine: the small, loud boy with a french passport
William:the african-american kid who went to my school last year, only boy who understood half of what i said
Stephanine:the tall, asian girl who fit in best in japan, an awesome person
Hallie:the sweet girl who had the worst time ajusting, another awesome person
Ms. Renea: the chaperone and the only person who had ever been to japan before
for the first few days i stayed at a camp called the Mairne house Camp with hallie, stephanie, 2 girls from new zealand and 2 girls from the maldives. then i went to stay with the Okazaki family in the city of Fukuoka.
Now i am going to post my journal here so i don't have to keep it on post-it notes!!!!! Happy reading!!!