December 19, 2008
Happy Birthday Wessel!!
Hey everyone, what’s up?
December 17th was my birthday and I turned 18! Wow I’m old. I still remember thinking about how cool and old 18 year old people are when I was still a kid… haha! If I was in Holland right now, I would be an official adult and I actually feel like one!
It has been three months and a half already since I came to Japan. So much has happened so fast and I’m really used to the life here now. Like EF (the exchange program that I’m with) always says, “It’s not better, it’s not worse, it’s different”. I totally agree with it. I’m really enjoying my time here, but sometimes it gets really difficult and you just have a bad day. But that happens to everyone everywhere and I just have to accept it.
At the start of this month I moved, together with my home stay family, to a bigger house. Nice, I love bigger houses! I don’t have to share a room with the two brothers anymore, only with the oldest brother. I can also study better at home now, which I think is the best improvement.
Right now I’m focusing on training (karate, karate, karate). It’s winter break now, by the way. We have lots of free time and I’m planning to spend it well. Although it sounds weird, I think I will go to school a lot. At school I can train with the karate club and maybe study at the computer room after. There are a lot of people coming to school during the vacation, so it’s actually pretty common here.
Next to training I also want to do more fun stuff in Tokyo. There are so many cool things to see and do here and I believe I haven’t even seen half of it. But it doesn’t always have to be, like, going to a super big temple or go shopping at an awesome neighborhood. I also like to just relax at a nice coffee shop and just watch the thousands of people that are walking by.
To conclude this somewhat random post, I’d like to say that I’m really glad that I came here. I think this is one of the biggest events in my life so far. I learned so many things about life and people. In Japan everything seems so familiar, but it also has many strange sides. This is what makes it really cool, but once again sometimes difficult as well. Ok! Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next post! (Well… I kind of won’t see you but… you know what I mean)
Jaa-na (see you),
(The cool and old 18 year old) Wessel!