Hello,

since last our hero wrote, he had found himself about to begin on a quick ``side adventure`` to his already uuummm...exciting story.(hows that for eloquence).

Anyway,

I just came back from Australia, a world which I learned is not that much different from Florida.  It had tourists, and beaches and everything.  All I missed was the American accent. 

So this is how it went.  We stayed in Cairns, Australia, which is the complete opposite side on Australia from Sydney.  We where north, Sydney is south.  Anyway, aftyer an eight hour plane ride ( which actually seemed like nothing), we arrived at the airport.  Suddenly I realized, I am an obvious foriegner in a group of Japanese school students, I could not stand out ANY more.  Also, the second thing I noticed was that, it really is summer in Australia right now.  But that didn`t matter, Cairns has the exact same weather as FLorida, go figure.  Everyone was also telling me it was humid, I didn`t seem to notice!

Well, it was great, that first day we saw some aboriginal themed stuff, and stopped at a beach and well that was it.  Second day, we went whitewater rafting and took a skilift type thing(I forgot the word for it) which they called the Skyrail over the rain forest.  On the third day, we went to an island, snorkeled, and I could have seen the Great Barrier Reef in a glass bottom boat, but I missed it.(T.T)

The food was great, we had an Australian bbq, which was awesome.  I cannot describe the great taste of that, but it was pretty *bleep* good.  Apparently though, most of the Japanese kids didn`t like it, it was too salty for them or something.  Anyway, it was good for me, and that is all that matters.

I also got to use my language abilities.  I though my Japanese wasn`t nearly good enough to help out, but as it turns out, I did help out, just a little.  I helped my friends order at McDonalds, which was really cool, Australian McDonalds and Japanese McDonalds are  very different by the way.  There where other little conversations too, I won`t even tell you how many times  had to translate, ``which one of us do you like`` into english from Japanese.  pure madness.

the truth is where I was everything was in two languages, Japanese and English, and the truth is I spoke more japanese while I was there on average per day than in Japan, go figure.  There where a lot of Japanese tourists, so that was probably another reason for that.

 Also,

I have changed host families, I live in the Nishino`s house, with a host mother and host father, no one else.  It is a slight contrast from living in a house with siblings, but I sure I can adjust, the thing is getting used to the new family after getting used to the old one.  It is a really weird feeling, but I am sure it wil pass with time.

well,

That is all,

Kuruma ni ki wo tsukete

Edi