to find the Sun: Switching host families, Venezuelans, Fulfilling my neglected duties.

This will be yet another disorganized catchup blog. I really need to be better about this...

I switched host families.
Current family description: Doughnut factory owners, live close to school, host sister is in her upper 20s and lives at home and is pregnant [I will be a host aunt soon :) ], very nice host mom, host dad speaks some English [but usually I understand him better when he speaks Japanese], host grandma is cute. 2 pugs. Nice garden. Piano. Electric organ in my bedroom.
I'm really really sad about leaving my old home though. I felt like a real part of the family. I had gotten completely comfortable and happy there. And then I had to leave. It's hard.
It's funny. At the beginning of the year, I was really craving couches. Now, my host family has a couch, and I'm craving futons and kotatsu. In general, my current family is much more Western and less traditional than my old family. But that's not really a surprise, given my old house was a temple and more than twice as old as the US.

The house change has really put me in a weird mood. The smooth wooden gear feeling has gone away, and now I feel more like... hmmm... like I'm trying to pick up a large heavy object with my toes in the dark. I think once I get adjusted to life here and mandolin starts back up I'll be back to normal.

Positive thing: I think this will be a really nice place to be for the Christmas season. It's obviously not a big deal in Japan, but this house definitely will be festive in a wintery way. We spent the whole first day I was here putting up tons of different christmas lights all over the garden and the fence and the balconies. [And going to lots of stores trying to find more lights.]

Other positive thing [pre-switch]: Last Wednesday [?] my mandolin club and I and the brass band club went to the culture center to have a workshop with a group of musicians from Venezuela. It was super fun to learn about different types of music, especially hearing my Japanese friends' reactions to it. Lots of new rhythms. They performed lots of songs for us [mini Venezuelan guitar + flute + percussion + bass]. And then I learned that we were performing for them too! Eek! So I performed mandolin to professional musicians. I only know very basic mandolin, and had only played the song once or twice, and didn't remember it and was just getting used to reading music for mandolin and was basically incompetent. But my comfort zone has expanded sooooooo ridiculously much that it didn't stress me out. I just tried to play the first note of each measure and hope no one paid attention to me.
Oh right! What I actually wanted to say about that was about Spanish and languages. They spoke in Spanish for the presentation and someone else translated it to Japanese. Prime situation to compare my language abilities. I'm still better at Spanish than Japanese. But for the first time, this didn't make me frustrated. Instead, I felt happy. I realized that they languages weren't in competition with each other, and knowing a little of both just means more people I can understand. I'm not so good at explaining this. I think now that I am more functional with Japanese it is easier for me to remember why I am here and not in Spain. Gosh I'm really tired and not at all capable of saying what I'm trying to say.

I've been soooo sleepy lately. I took a five hour nap today.

I'm sorry about this post... I had planned to make it more eloquent and less moody.

Oh Oh Oh!!! Not done yet!!! I have COMPLETELY shirked my duties and not put up any pictures of my temple!!! I probably should have done that when I lived there... But in any case, I'll put them up now.