newsnewsnews, and lots of it

oh boy, do i have a lot to post. I just got back from the orientation, which was really fun. after school on saturday, I hoped a train down to the Olympic Youth Center (i had packed some clothes) and met up with WYS. I was talking with Chris, who is the other American exchange student through WYS. what are teh odds that they is a japanese cheerleading convention going on at the same time as we having our orientation? well, there was. that was fun. I met the students who were going abroad in August or so, and they are all fun. We had a fairly boring time up until when the orientation program ended. then the fun began. Chris and I went off to look for the cheerleaders, but came up short in the end, which wasnt terrible because of the other fun things that happened. We ended up chilling with the outbound students, which was probably what we were supposed to do. that or sleep. and sleep i did not.
we ate some stuff and took pictures and shared purikura, and all sorts of fun things, and then as it got later and later we started to thin out. In the end, I was talking with 3 or 4 of the female exchange students (is this the right usage dad?) and we just chatted for a while. I dont really know what time that was, but after a while, we decided to go to bed. We were all in the lounge at the end of the hall, and I walked with them to there room, which was right across from mine. I stood in teh doorway and wished them goodnight, and as i was about to leave one of them asked me an english question. so, I started to explain. then i explained some other english things, and after a little while, they told me to come in and sit, as having the door open the whole time was letting the cool night air out. oh yeah, it is pretty warm here in Tokyo. so I came in, and i basically started teaching at around 2 in the morning. I explained all sorts of things (one of them asked why we pet cows and eat beef, but pet chickens and eat chickens, for which I could only explain the cows to beef thing, and pulled the rest completely out of my ass, but they believed me, and thought that I was a genius, and so they started calling me Piitaa sensei, which kinda means peter the teacher. oh, the cows to beef, as well as sheep on the roof but mutton on the table has to do with the rich french who lived in england around the year 1000 (i think that is right) and the poor farmers. the poor farmers, who saw the animals live, used teh english words, but the rich french, who saw the animals on their plates, used the french words, and over the centuries, they have adapted into the modern words we have now. what i made up had to do with the possiblility that chickens might not have been native to one country or the other, so the other people adapted that word. ( also pulled a explaination of nickname out of my ass at breakfast this morning. i said taht nick in itself was a 'nickname' and that it might have been the first.)
After that, we kept talking, and I would occaisonally teach them something, and we were all getting a little tired, but it was super fun, so we didnt do anything. About 4:30 in the morning, we looked outside and saw that it was getting light out, so we decided to go for a walk. we walked around the campus to work of some steam, and see if the cold air would wake us up a little. we came back to the room and one of the girls said something along the lines of that she had forgotten to finish the orientation work book, so she started working on that. i walked over to her, sitting on her bed, and asked if she needed help with it. so, I was a teacher once more. I sat down at the foot of the bed, and helped her. by this point, one of the group had gone back to her room (usually two, sometimes 4, this was a 2) and one of the other girls had fallen asleep on the other bed. We worked for a bit longer, and everyone else in teh room (four total, one asleep, one other girl, the girl i was helping, and me) and we were all pretty tired. I kept sorta nodding off, but that was beacsue I had been up for close to 24 hours, and they were all like "its ok, you can sleep", and I was like, thanks, but dont we have to be up 7? well, the next thing I remember was waking up about 6:30 in the morning lying in bed next to this girl (and by that I mean, I was asleep at the foot, and she at the head, or something like that.) most fun I have had since I came to japan. then, this morning, we finished off the orientation, took the obligatory photos, exchange emails and phonenumbers and cellphone addresses
and speaking of cellphones, I bought one with my counselour after teh orientation. The phone that I had first looked at at the Vodafone store was 10,500 yen (about 100 bucks), but we went to the local friendly neighborhood 7-11, and got it for 7140, which gave me enough money to also by a 3000 yen prepaid card, which I would have needed anyway, but this was basically with teh phone, enough money to fax the application off to vodafone, and also enough for some ice cream while we waited. my phone isnt the coolest phone on the planet, but it is in japanese, which is good for me. it is also bright yellow, which is really cool. it can take pictures, send emails and such, music, someother cool things, I am still trying to figure it all out.

much love

Peter