My Weekend

Hey you guys,
Things here are . . . meh. Ok I guess. Just today was bad, the rest of the weekend rocked. I'll tell you about it all.
Saturday, as many of you saw from my pictures and videos, I went to a Japanese garden with Oniisan. It was very beautiful! I felt very Japanese, riding my bike through Ibaraki. The people here ride and control bikes as easily as walking! I see elderly people riding around, zig zagging through cars and people, with one hand, the other holding an umbrella so they won't tan. It's freaking crazy! I'm not even half that good on a bike so it was kind of scary at times because I seriously thought I was going to crash, die, or take out a pedestrian. All went well though and now I have a bike I can use whenever I want :)
Sunday I managed to go to church. There are four missionaries in the area and, sadly, they are all male. So I'm still a little on my own. One of the Elders is from Utah though so that was exciting. He's a greeny, only been here 12 weeks. Poor guy. He even has a "female friend" (as he put it) who will be going to Snow College next semester. There are a few people who speak English though and one woman translated RS for me. One of the Elders translated Sunday School and during Sacrament I just sat quietly without a translator. The people closest to my age, who are unmarried, happen to be the missionaries. Everyone else is either middle aged, a young married couple, or very small children. But it was fun to sing the hymns in Japanese so even if I can't communicate with people or understand what they're bearing their testimonies about I can enjoy the singing.
Monday was a holiday so I went to Kyoto with Ooki-Chan and her best friend Taiko-San. We went to Heian Shrine and Yasaka Shrine. I was fortunate enough to see two weddings, both with the couple wearing very traditional clothes. It was way cool! I also bought a fortune at Heian Shrine, extremely good luck, and made a wish at Yasaka Shrine with a coin. Again there are tons of pictures on FB. I really liked Kyoto, the shrine I desperately want to see, the Golden Pavilion, will be my next trip I hope. I think it would look best with snow around it :) The people in Kyoto, despite being only an hour by train away, are very different from the people in Ibaraki. Ibaraki is kind of the "small" town in Osaka so it feels just like home for me. In Kyoto I saw more couples holding hands in that one afternoon then I've seen in Ibaraki in a week! Plus there are many more foreigners in Kyoto so I wasn't really stared at. Once we got back to Ibaraki though it was back to being an item of attention, which is fine with me because it gives me the chance to smile at people and say hello hehe.
Today, Tuesday, we had a placement test at Otemon. Out of everyone I speak and know the least amount of Japanese so I planned on doing the worst on the test. I only studied a little, since I figured it's not a competition. When we got the tests my stomach dropped. It was all in Japanese! And not just Hiragana or Katakana (the alphabets I know) but tons of Kanji! On a good day I know maybe 10 Kanji. So I attempted to read through the test but skipped over the Kanji questions, with the exception of the one Kanji I knew. (They asked us to not guess, and to only answer the ones we knew.) They gave us 90 minuets to take the test, I was done after about 20. The questions I could read through had words I didn't know with verbs I did know so I had no idea what the questions were asking. It was seriously frustrating. So I knew maybe 1% of the test and then left way before everyone else. But when all the others met up in the International Room they also had a very hard time with the test. So I will be working out of the same text book from Snow College and my Japanese class will meet two times a day. As far as I can tell I will be the only one in that level . . . *sigh* I have a lot to learn.
On top of the stupid test and my inability to speak, read, understand, anything Japanese (grrr!) a Typhoon is going to hit Ibaraki tomorrow. So, despite it being my last day off before school starts, I get to hide indoors while the wind tries to rip Osaka apart. Nobody worry though, the Typhoon is supposed to be mild with no serious damage. I will be fine.
To cheer myself up I keep thinking about the fact that there is a used Kimono store in Ibaraki that Ooki-Chan said she would take me to. Some of her previous homestay girls have gone there and bought real silk Kimonos for a reasonable price. Hopefully I can get one too :)
Love you all!