Not quite. That never wakes me up. I really woke up this morning to Mum running down the stairs shouting, "Check your email!!!"
And then this:
Just like that, I go from, "I don't know where I'll be. I don't know who my host family is, whether I'll have siblings, what my school will offer, or what sort of area I'll be living in," to:
I'll be living in Otofuke-cho, Katou-gun in the Hokkaido prefecture.It's a residential area with a population of about 45,000. From what I can gather, it seems to be in the country (or at least not in a densely populated area). The nearest large city is Sapporo, which is 200 km away.
Hokkaido's climate is comparable to that of northeastern US. It has very cold winters and relatively hot summers.
I'll be living with the Ono family. My host father, Tatsuo, is an insurance agent and my host mother, Yuri, is a clerk. (After waking me up this morning, Mum went on about how she was betting that my host parents would be super artsy and interesting and amazing. I said that they'd be accountants. I was pretty close. [I wouldn't judge them on their occupational titles, though. They seem to be pretty interesting people.])
I'll have a sister, Sakura, who is one year younger than me. Apparently she will be an AFS participant this year, as well, going to the United States. I hope that she won't be gone while I'm there; it'd be nice to have a sibling and someone to show me around.
My host family has two small, fluffy, white dogs named Momo and Ume (Peach and Plum). I'm very relieved that I'll have some pets in my company, even if they're not cats.
I will attend Obihiro Ohtani High School, a Buddhist private school about 9 km from my host family's home. It seems like a pretty typical Japanese high school in that it has standard courses and clubs, including a mountaineering club (that's interesting) and a brass band, among many others. For some reason, though, way more girls attend it than boys.
My host family has described themselves as "formal, neat/tidy, and planned/organized," among other things (this is from a list of characteristics that they were to choose). Looking around my room at this moment, I realize more than ever that I'll be needing to make some adjustments to even the most fundamental aspects of my current lifestyle... ("messiness accepted" was NOT checked)
Every time I look at the file, it seems like I discover some new detail. It carries a lot of information in its deceptively few pages.
It's exciting and more unreal than ever to think that I'll be living for a year with these people, becoming a part of their family.
