April 22nd-26th: Welcome Party! (But the third one?)

Hello everyone I am sorry for the delay on my blogs. It was a combination of Golden Week laziness and then actually catching the flu for a few days that has caused this delay but I'm here now ready to blog. I also wanted to mention that I am not going to go into detail about my classes in these weekly blogs unless something exciting happens with them its just too much to write every week with all the extra stuff happening in my life and my classes, so I'll focus on the exciting for now. The first thing that happened to me this week was a Welcome Party at MGU Yokohama Campus. At this point I just have to guess that Welcome parties and things like this are a much bigger deal than they are in the US so I am sorry if you get bored hearing about them because they aren't really going to stop until I start going to Farewell Parties. This party was much more special to me though because one of my buddies (her name is Fuka) was part of the organization that was hosting it, so I mainly came out to support her. My other buddy (Mayu) was also going to be there so it would be a great time to get to know them and practice my Japanese. When I arrived at the party with some other international students I was told there were snacks and drinks to share, but in typical fashion they quickly disappeared so I didn't get much in regards to refreshments. While we waited fro the main festivities to begin Mayu went around introducing me to her different friends and people she knew. Try as I might I didn't get much Japanese practice in because as much as I wanted to practice my Japanese they also wanted to practice their English. It was interesting to hear because I would ask questions in Japanese or answer in Japanese and they would respond in English. After a lot of small talk they signaled to us that the games were about to start. We were split into teams based on what we had on our name tags and were then balanced out with a somewhat even number of international students and MGU students. The first game was a game of translation telephone. Basically my worst nightmare as a barely speaking Japanese person. We had three rounds where the sentence started in English and had to finish in Japanese, then the reverse, and then a speed round. While I kept cheering our team on when I could I wasn't sure how we were going to do, especially since the other teams were cheating (yes I am that bitter about it I wrote it into my blog) but we actually won in the end! We were supposed to have a prize but someone had forgotten it so we just had bragging rights. After that we played the old favorite of Bingo for some of the prizes they did have and I ended up winning right when the prizes ran out (I am okay with it though since I got such a sweet prize with my other Bingo game). After that there was supposed to be more mingling, but they made a crucial mistake... they played music. And if you know me, and you know what I do with music and a floor, then you know I turned that Welcome Party into a Dance Party. What can I say it is my super power. I got everyone dancing by the time they had to officially end the party. So in the end it ended up being a lot of fun and I got to surprise a lot fo people with my sick moves. The next day I got to continue the dancing trend at Ballroom Dance Club. This time I learned Cha Cha and Quick Step which were both a lot of fun but a little hard to pick up on, I hope to get better with practice. Though the group dances were a little awkward because I still have yet to master dancing with the guys (I know I am supposed to utilize their space as much as mine but I have no clue how to if anyone knows how please send some tips!). Though I am in a little better shape than the other International Student in the club, I danced with him for the last dance and he was... okay. I had to lead a lot and I could tell he didn't remember the dance at all, but we did walk back to MISH together and I got to get to know him better which is always fun. Nothing really exciting happened until Friday evening where I started to feel a little off. The evening before I had felt a sore throat coming on and I had only gotten worse through Friday. Despite this I worked on some homework and tried to get some things done. It wasn't until early Saturday that I realized (with my Mom's help) that I officially had the flu. I had heard of some people having to flu earlier in the week and didn't give it much thought, it wasn't until that morning that I realized oh those sick people are in my dorm. One of the main culprits being the International guy from Ballroom Dance Club. So there I was on the cusp of Golden Week the longest vacation I would get, and I was sick as a dog... I'll continue this in the next blog because despite being sick I still managed to have some adventures. Until next time!