Orientation Day 1!

SKP Orientation started today at 9 in the morning. I got up at 7:30 and showered. I even had time to eat breakfast. Lol. Then Chirstine, Sindre, and I walked to the school together. But it was super rainy! I didn't have an umbrella so Christine was sharing with me but I think we were both kind of getting wet haha. Luckily it's a pretty short walk to school from the apartment, probably 15 minutes? We were early, yay! And Sindre knew where we were going, yay! Then we sat around anxiously waiting for the test~ Finally we started with a 40 minute listening section. It was pretty stressful because the dialogue was only played once so it was easy to miss information. I also didn't know the vocabulary of some of the harder questions. I think I did reasonably well though. Then we had a short break, and then the written part. I was most stressed about this, but I think it probably went okay?? There were three sections with progressively harder questions. I felt like I did well on sections 1 and 2 but once I got to the third section (page 9/13) I really couldn't answer any of them. Some people guessed and put down answers for all of them but I didn't really see the point. Anyway, glad it's over with! Then we had a lunch break! Except none of us had campus maps or knew where the cafeterias were (I felt like this could have been better planned...) We found one cafeteria but it was closed, and eventually we made it to the on-campus subway. Lol. I had a teriyaki chicken sandwich which was reasonably good although the chicken had a weird texture like over-processed meat. After that, we had our first orientation session where we went over the schedule for the next days and general boring info. The introduction to life in Kyoto was decent though. Next we had an apartment living session and then we were allowed to go home before the "welcome dinner."

Christine and I relaxed a bit then went to the Lawson 100 yen store. I got a couple frozen things for emergency meals, apple juice, salt + sugar, and "peanut cream." I hoped the peanut cream would be like peanut butter except maybe creamier, but it has a really weird texture more like caramel sauce lol. Maybe too sweet. Then, I wasn't paying attention to the time and we were late to the dinner! Of course then we got lost trying to find the building. We made it though, but the food was mostly gone! It was kind of snack food anyway, and people were standing and eating with little plates so I would not call it "dinner" haha. It was a bit awkward trying to meet people... Some people have distinct groups already based on their apartments or dorms and then there were some people who seemed like they didn't know anyone. I think I was probably a bit overly boisterous for some of the Japanese people lol. But I got compliments on my Japanese which raised my confidence for tomorrow's interview~ We definitely freaked out one of the buddies... We were kind of curious about him and a couple girls thought he was cute but he kept disappearing so we decided to hunt him down lol. Ayame introduced us awkwardly and then I awkwardly asked him a couple questions in Japanese and he answered briefly and then we took an awkward photo lol. His face in the photo is like "WTF..." But actually I think he's probably shy! But he definitely thinks I am pretty weird now lol. Oh well. It's hard trying to meet people just randomly introducing yourselves! (Said awkward photo can be found on facebook). Then we got kicked out around 8 and headed home. A couple peeps from the other building wanted to get some food and I decided I was hungry too so we went on a search. But after 8, almost everything was closed! Eventually we gave up and microwaved some food in my apartment. Everyone was tired so they headed home soon after that. I have another early day tomorrow, so I need to sleep too!

New friends!