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Stephanie- Move to Second Host Family

Move to My Second Host Family

Hi everyone! さしぶり！Sorry it's been awhile since I've update this last. I've been meaning to do it for awhile, but have been busy in the last month, and had been putting it off. So here is a bit of an update since my last post.

I moved to my second host family at the end of February after five months with my first host family. But it was nice because before I moved I had a chance to do lots of things with my first host family like to out to dinner and karaoke together before I had to say goodbye. One of the members of our Hippo club, Ei-chan, is a sushi chef and owns his own restaurant, so one night my host family and I went there for dinner. The food was great and we even got a behind the scenes tour (or more appropriately, behind the counter, I suppose). It was really fun!


The last day with my family, they had a farewell party for me in their apartment and lots of Hippo members and other friends and neighbors came to say goodbye. It really impressed me to see all my friends and family from Wako-shi all together and made me realize how many people I had gotten to know and made connections with in the past 5 months.

Last day with my first Hippo family
The poster that my host mom made for me on my last day.  :) The letters in the guitars spell my name in katakana and kanji and the words in the middle say "Ganbatte!" or "Good luck!" in different languages.
Rilakuma inari that my host mom and sister made for my farewell party！ Inari are delicious fried tofu pockets filled with rice, and Rilakuma is a Japanese cartoon character ('rila' is short for 'relax' and 'kuma' in japanese beans 'bear'). かわいい！！！



Two of the neighbor kids from same apartment building. Their mom is American and their dad is Japanese and I became friends with their family while in Wakoshi. We did seveal things together and they even invited me for Thanskgiving, since their mom cooked an American Thanksgiving dinner!
Though I was sad to say goodbye to my first host family and all the friends that I made in Wakoshi, I now have a new host family that is really great and I've already met lots of new people in the area I live in now.  It's nice to have a chance to get to know a different area of Tokyo, too. I now live in Edogawa-ku, in the Eastern part of Tokyo with my host mom Bambi-chan, host dad Sato-chan, and 11 year old host sister Maron-chan (their nicknames in Hippo).


The first day with my new host family! We went out to eat with some members of my new Hippo club. My host mom Bambi-chan is in the middle and on the left is a friend from Hippo.



With my host dad Sato-chan (on the right) and new friend from Hippo, Kazuyan.
Eating strawberries with my new host sister


Maron-chan かわいい！
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