EXCITING updates!

Ok, maybe it is not so exciting.

Today, I checked my Yale email account and PII emailed me regarding my host family information! I will be living with the Mizukami family, and they have a 4-year-old daughter. I am not sure how well a four-year-old can speak Japanese, but hopefully, better than me so that I can practice my Japanese with this little kid. I remember when I was filling out the host-family forms, I checked that I wanted a little kid in my host family, but I was thinking more around the age of 6 to 7, an age where they should be speaking fluent Japanese...

Both my host mom and dad are 32 years old, a fairly young couple.(Come to think of it, the mom might be looking very young since Japanese women don't age until they are 40.) Since they are quite young, I hope that they speak some English so that they can understand me better. 

Receiving my host family information suddenly gives me a lot of motivation to review vocabs and practice Japanese more, since I am afraid that all I can say when I meet them would be, "Nice to meet you. My name is...." and then followed by long silence. That will actually come true if I don't start practicing now. Oh, the horror... 

Also, I took the online placement test yesterday, which consists of four parts, listening, culture, reading, and grammar. I did the best in reading part, b/c I can read Kanji, and I usually am very good at guessing their pronunciation and meanings. (Some Kanji, interestingly, sound similar to Cantonese, which is my native dialect. So I can get by fine.) I did poorly in the listening part, which means watching all those Japanese dramas doesn't really help a whole lot. 

I also checked google map to see how far my house is from the school. I don't understand it completely b/c it is all in Japanese. But seems like I will be walking around 40 minutes daily to just get to school. I guess it won't be too bad since I need to lose some weight before heading back to China at the end of this summer. Speaking of weight loss, I have been trying to exercise these few days before going to Japan, aiming to be able to buy some clothes that fit me in Japan. Exercising is, just like popular belief, very hard.(But I have to keep doing it since my sister called me "blowfish" after I called her "monkey." I am not so sure if "blowfish" is even a real animal, b/c I first encountered blowfish in Finding Nemo.) I think my aging might have contributed to my lack of mobility. 

One final thing, I also bought souvenirs from the Yale store for my host family: a cup that has "MOM" on it, a shot glass that can serve as a tea cup, and a deck of playing cards.