N-n-nani???

Are you kidding me? What are earth just happened? There's no way I have been here for a month. Just, like, NO. Time must have had a panic attack and high-tailed it into super speed mode last week when I lost my watch, and only now that I've found my watch can it calm down again.

I honestly don't know how to describe the feeling. Overall it feels like I haven't been here for that long, but I can quite clearly recall some incredibly long days that seemed to stretch weeks. However, there's mostly this strange feeling of some sort of wall in my brain that stands directly between the last time I saw my family before getting on the first plane and all of the moments thereafter. It sounds horribly cliche and completely obvious, but a huge change occurred then. I left everything I knew and loved (and a few things that I'm rather glad to be rid of for the time being) in exchange for a big, fat unknown. Of course, boarding that plane, I thought I had everything figured out. I had a plan. I'm going to completely rock Japan, I thought, I'm not going to be shaken by anything. Armed with the experiences and advice of past exchangers, I'll learn the language quickly and efficiently, I'll seamlessly adapt the Japanese lifestyle- everything's going to be perfect.

The first sign of my plan being pathetically ripped to shreds was even before I got on the plane. I didn't plan on crying at all. But I did. And here a quick recap of the first plane ride for you guys- tears and people staring at the crying girl in a funny jacket. It got better when I met the other exchangers, but none of them were crying. They were all excited, just like I had planned to be! Not fair. Maybe some of them cried on the plane to Tokyo, I dunno, but I know I did. And I was happy and sad to see my first host family- happy because the trek over was finally over and I could get some sleep, and sad because they weren't my family. They didn't even speak the same language as me. The first night was terribly, awfully difficult. And the first morning. And pretty much the first week. If you wanna be even more general about the definition of "difficult", I'd say the first month.

To save some space, here's a list (as opposed to more lengthy prose) of "Things I thought about exchange- before and now":

BEFORE:
School is going to be a snap, I'll make close friends no problem.
NOW:
I have tons of friends. But sadly no close friends in school yet. The language barrier is, well, quite the barrier when it comes to making close friends. It's getting there, don't fret.
BEFORE:
I <3 JAPAN.
NOW:
I neither dislike Japan nor love it to shreds. It's where I live right now, it's where I'm learning all of these new things. It's sort of like how I feel about America- yeah, I like America, it's where I was born and raised for the first 15 years of my life, but do I "OMG <3 SO TOTALLY LOVE" America? No. I'm attached to it. "Attached" is a much better word. I'm growing attached to Japan with all of its flaws and awesome-ness-es, just like I'm attached to America and its flaws and awesome-ness-es (please excuse my making up words, but they fit better :)
BEFORE:
I will work hard at the language so I will understand everything at 1 month, speak decently at 3, and be fluent by 8.
NOW:
I can't tell you much about months 3 and 8 right now, but I can for sure tell you I don't understand everything at 1 month. The whole language learning thing isn't going AT ALL how I predicted. I keep hitting levels of understanding and speaking. It's not like this for everyone, but I get "clicks". Meaning one day I feel like I'm about to explode from not understanding anything and the inability to express myself, and the next I can suddenly understand 2x more than the day before. And then the process repeats. Right now I can understand a lot, especially dealing with food, schedules, school, cleaning, and travel, but stick me in a room of girls talking about boy bands and I'm lost. And I speak in very few full sentences and a lot of single, disjointed words. I understand 10x more grammar than I can use, but I'm learning. Right now, it's really annoying because I can understand a lot of the nouns/adjectives/particles (a Japanese thing) people use, but I'm still getting used to conjugated verbs. It makes for conversations like this:

(host mom): Teresa.
(me): Yes?
hm: Tonight (pause)
m: ... Yes?
hm: With Otousan (pause)
m: ...... Yes?
hm: At a restaurant (pause)
m: (getting irritated at the slow speaking) YES?
hm: Your camera sdhf;sdhf;osdhf (conjugated verb I don't know yet).
m: What?
hm: (starts whole thing over at the same frustratingly slow speed)
m: (smacks forehead) Verb- What verb you say just now?
hm: (looks confused) What?
m: (sighs)

So people tend to speak really slowly to me even if it's the stuff I already know, and then don't understand when I just need one or two words translated. In fact, I can usually understand a lot more when people speak quickly around me because it's easier to pick up on context clues that way. The slow speaking is really irritating. But the most irritating thing is when people talk about me while I'm standing right there, or when people answer for me. There's 2 types of people regarding this- the kind who try to get me to talk and understand things at a normal level, and the kind who expect me to not know anything and constantly answer for me, even when I can respond. I've been here for a month, I'm not COMPLETELY clueless. I know when people are talking about me, and when they think I don't understand what they're saying. It's not that people are saying bad things- not at all, really- but more that they think I can't understand them and feel free to discuss my language skills or my being an exchange student or my whatever when I'm 2 feet away. Gah!

Never mind, it turned into something lengthy anyways. Oh well. Those are pretty much the top 3 things that have been unexpected so far, though there's lots more. Just a word to future exchangers- whatever you think your exchange is going to be, it's not going to be that. It's different for everyone, and means something different for everyone, but no matter what, be prepared to be surprised.

I'm on Silver Week break right now, so I'll inform ya'll of last weeks happenings later!

Mata ne!