Picture's and Unfortunately Lazy Days

I am stuck in my room today. I'll tell you why when I'm sure what the cause is. Suffice it to say that I am sick. BLEH. It really sucks because today was my first Japanese language class but I couldn't go. So I decided to put up some pictures of Kyoto. Just the two, because with so many its hard to choose! So the left hand picture is of an outlying building-mbob at Kiyomizu-dera. Those are two of my close friends here. On the left is Joel: he's an Australian who is kind of sick of summer (something is wrong with his head, I swear). He's 18, and gets to stay in Japan for a whole school year. On the right is Diego, whose nationality and accent is a mess. Can you say Brazilian-American-Spanish-Portugese? Why he's learning yet another language I'm not quite sure (oh yeah, he flipped a coin). They're both a lot of fun. 

Alright, the picture on the right is of the waterfall at Kiyomizu-dera. It's supposed to be really pure (no contaminants). Everybody gets in a big huge line to drink from it. Doing so is supposed to be offer you good fortune in wealth, health, and education. (and people thought it was love not education. lol). Well Diego decided to drink from all three---and then got laughed at. Doing so, being greedy, apparently brings misfortune. In the next days he did indeed have misfortune with water. Superstitions aside it was very beautiful. All of us in our tour group (four Japanese girls, my friends Georg, Jacinthe, Diego, Joel, a girl named Deanna and I) got our pictures taken drinking the water. I need to get mine....and a decent picture of the geishas we saw. 

I'm doing pretty good here with my host family I think. I can't understand Okaasan very well (the mother) but I think we manage to get most things across even when Ryoichi or Yoko aren't home. I'm NOT doing so well with the trains on the other hand. 

I think I figured it out yesterday, but I'm not sure. It's kind of blurry. I certainly had a nightmare of a time getting to school yesterday morning. I got on the wrong train to start with--I couldn't remember which side to go up to catch the train to the right station, and got on the wrong one, at the wrong time, going the wrong direction. Apparently I zoned on the fact that trains here are actually on time. That's what I get for following another foreigner. I was an hour later to school than I had meant to be. I'd wanted to hang out on campus before class, but I didn't get to spend as much time doing that as I had intended. 

I had my first class yesterday, afternoon class that is. Tomorrow I'm supposed to have 3.... I've now already missed one. UGH! But noooo, I don't know if I can go. Can't very well go sick. Gah! Missing school is only good if you've got something more fun to do, and it's a special occassion. Sick is neither of those!

Anyways, not much to say today. Kind of quiet.