What a week!

Man, what a busy past 7 days it's been. Mitsuna arrived on April 25th and left Sunday night. I meant to blog more regularly about it, but there never seemed to be time. And of course I took maybe 5 pictures. I'm hoping some of the other host families got a few pictures of us!

At the zoo, exploring a doctor's kit:

Coloring eggs with Mitsuna

Easter egg hunt

The Japanese kids, their teacher and the host family kids

Beautiful gifts from Mitsuna. There are bookmarks her mother made, a tiny fan that is actually a card, a notebook shaped like a kimono, and a kamifusen--paper balloon--shaped like a goldfish.

This was also a gift from her, it's a picture book of a popular Japanese folktale, Urashimatarou


We really enjoyed having her here. I didn't speak as much Japanese as I had hoped, both because I was very self conscious and because Mitsuna wanted to practice her English. It did come in handy a few times when she didn't know a word, and she said it made her feel more comfortable knowing that I did understand some Japanese. It was a little frustating for me to realize how little Japanese I actually know, but it was also great being able to listen to other people speak and see what I could understand (very little!). It's given me the boost I needed to keep up with my studies