I haven't posted for a while. Lazy me. I'm actually really only posting now to put off finishing the horrendously boring uni stuff I have to do. It's and introduction to an online system we have to use and it's completely pointless. *sigh*

I've been back in Australia for about 3 weeks now. Though it feels like longer. I jumped right back into things so I haven't been too bored. I started uni this year and it's been a fairly slow start so it hasn't been that interesting yet. I have 8am maths lectures 5 days a week which is just lovely.

Anyway, that's it really... my life aint that exciting.

Today was the last day of exchange. We finished school and my class wrote things all over the board for me it was really sweet.

After school Mara, Maddi, Helen and I went to karaoke. We sang loudly but mostly on key and drank too much soft drink. There is photo evidence :) A highlight of the evening was when the lyrics for Oh blah Di, Oh blah dah said "Oh blah Di, Oh blah dah, life goes on, Bra".

I'm going to stay with my parentals in the hotel tomorrow. We're meeting at 12 and then my host family and real family are having lunch together.

I'll post a preper entry explaning what has happened in the last week when I haven't posted. I'll try for Saturday evening or maybe Sunday. We'll see...

There's snow this morning. It's not a lot so far and it probably won't hang around but it's still very pretty.

It was back to school on the 7th :( not so cool but bearable. And it's a public Holiday on Monday woot long weekend! Anyway, Again a brief rundown of the interveneing week

( Brief! Who am I kidding... it's epic )
Having to finish this fast as Hiro wants to use the computer...

Love and Sqiggles
Brenna

at 11:30 on New Year's Eve Yu, Hiro and I all went down to the local temple. We joined the line to ring the bell at midnight (somewhere close anyway) and waited around. We had the countdown while we were in the line, and everybody counted down with the big projection they had up. I've got some good photos of me with the bell and a short video of Hiro ringing it. Once we'd rung te bell we went to have some of the food on offer. We had red bean soup with mochi balls in it wich was yummy, sweet and warm. We ate it standing around the fire which was lit outside. After the soup we had a warm, sweet drink made from rice, I can't remember what it was called, but it was good.

We went into the Temple proper next. We filled out little paper wishes, we had to fill out our name and age and write a wish for the new year. There was also some text which we traced over and a sticky note which we also wrote out names on. The wishes were collected up and then we took part in a ceremony, which I think is for purification or something similar. There were three temple atendees or monks, I'm not sure which, who carried out eh ceremony. They chanted to a drum beat, and then we got a sort of patting down on out back and shoulders while we were still kneeling. When they had finished that we got little good luck charms with our names that we had written on sticky notes attached to them.

We hung around for a little bit after that. There was a little games set up with a ring toss and air rifle. The guy running the game just kept moving us forward till we were right up at the game and couldn't have lost even if we'd tried :) Yu and I both came away with lots of snackfood. We went home after that but didn't go to bed straight away and it was after 3am before I was in bed.

( further details on my movements for 1/1/09 and 2/1/09 )
I'm going shopping with Mara and Helen tomorrow so I'll go to bed soon as those two will wear me out tomorrow.

Love and Squiggles
Brenna

I haven't posted for a while so here is a quick run down of events:

23rd- Mara and My host sister's friend Shouko came over and we baked, Mara and I made cupcakes the other girls made piklets with yummy stuff in them. We ate sooo much, as on top of our baking we had heaps of snaks and pizza. It was fun!

24th- I met up with Kaori, who was my second host sister last time I was in Japan. I went with her to listen to her band jam. It's her and a guitarist, they're a blues band called Manekineko 6:34 Blues. We listened to CDs and they played some songs for me. They are playing live on Jan 11th and I'm going to see them then as well.

Christmas day was slow, I read and faffed about online. Then spent some time talking to the parentals on the phone and then to Dad online.

26th- another slow day. Yu and I went grocery shopping. We all went out for dinner together to Denny's. Desert was an epic chocolate sunday. I took pitures :D

27th- Went window shopping in the early afternoon and then went to see Yu's friend in a jazz concert. She plays with her university's jazz orchestra. It was a good concert and we had dinner out afterward with Yu's mother.

28th- Went shopping to buy Yu a laptop, kinda boring but it was succesful and a purchase was made. It's a toshiba dynabook. It's pretty speccy and has good graphics and sound.

29th- Shopping again! Yu her friend and I went shopping in Nagoya. thanks to cheap shops and winter sales I got some good bargins :)

30th- In the morning I helped Hiro (host father) change the tyres on the car to the ice and snow tyres. It hasn't snowed in Nagoya yet but I am still hopeful.

New years eve and New years day were epic and it's late so i'll post them tomorrow hopefully.

We went to Kyoto today, it was lots of fun. Had to be at school at 8:15 to leave at 8:30 so it was a bit of an early start. There were 43 of us so we filled up the bus :) We were silly on the way there, we started cam-whoring on the bus and didn't stop till it was time to go home :) so there's a pic spam on fb.

( ...further adventures of our intrepid explorers )

Ok I got the date of my move wrong. I changed host families last sunday, we drove to a shopping mall near Nagoya and met my new host family there. That mean I only spent 10 days with the Fujimotos but my new host family are nice as well. There are just two of them, a father and daughter, as the parents are divorced. I'm the sixth exchange student they've hosted. And they have a pet ferret he is called Stone, he's very cute and ferrety.

( If you want more you know where to click! )

Apologies to all and sundry who care that I haven't updated with anything useful in a week. I've been busy and there have been network problems.

( The tubes are clogged! )

It's getting late and I was really tired today so I going to bed early.

I'll post a proper long and informative entry tomorrow if I get the chance failing that you might have to wait for the weekend. I'm sure you've heard of paitience.

Love and Sqiggles
Brenna

After the horror that is a plane flight in the middle of the night I am now in Japan.
( Read on for Epic Adventures in the Land of the Rising Sun... )

My previous post is now no longer true.

Due to sinus infection and not really being ready on time I'm not leaving on Friday. If I'm lucky Seirinkan will still let me come for six weeks.

*fingers crossed*

And Other things...
I had really yummy turkish food for dinner tonight. :)

I don't update this enough. Not by anyone's standards of enough.

Currently my lower abdominals on my right side are in quite a bit of pain. My back did something funny and gave way while I was basing a balance yesterday morning. There were three of us in the balance, and the whole thing collapsed, when I did.

Next Friday I am flying out to Japan!!!

I am exited, and cursing my timing, 'cause there is all this stuff I want to do here which happens when I am away. It also has not quite sunk in.

I wouldn't be surprised if, even once at the airport, I still will not have gotten my head around it.

Last weekend I had my circus show. It was so much awesome. We re-used the table sliding act from swashbuckle with a few minor changes, and instead of being pirates and sailors we were dressed as clowns. For the girls this meant unitards in a number of bright colours, with contrasting flares and flowers. Mine was lime green with purple flares and a had a pink sparkly wig. The boys had big loose clown suits, but we all had clown wigs, as well as rosy cheeks and red noeses. As well as table sliding we had a pyramids act and I had a solo trapeze act. There was an adults show on Saturday, a kids show Sunday afternoon and teens show Sunday evening. On Saturday evening I helped out with door duties and I worked the spotlight for the second half of the show. Our group acts were in both of the Sunday shows and my trapeze act was int eh evening. It was to What's New Pussy Cat and I was dressed up as a cat. It was lots of fun, and fake eyelashes look very cool indeed!

I'm hoping to were the cat outfit again to a friend's 18th party, the theme is a character from a book, and I was thinking of going as puss in boots, I just need to buy some black kinky boots, and then i can go as some sort of modern puss in boots. I want to get a little gun as well, the kind that women used to keep in their hand bags or in a thigh holster.

On an unrelated note, I went for a walk around the river this morning with a friend, it was glorious weather. Though I was quite tired due to my busy w/e and the fact that I was up late last night because we were having a Blackadder marathon. It was worth it though.

I'm still tired even though I slept in this morning, and I'll go to bed early tonight because I have o be at work at 7:30 tomorrow morning. Unfortunately even though it is Thursday to morrow I do not have circus, because it id the school holidays, but on the 17th we are all going on a circus camp an I am looking forward to that very much, I will probably end up helping out as I am the oldest of the kids going by a few years. I like helping though so I do not mind.

Today I'm going to my friends house and we are going to do some baking. Last wednesday we made chocolate chip biscuits, read Tamora Pierce and played Rabbids on her nintendo ds. It was a fun day. We also got rained on when we went to the shops but it's only water.

And on Sunday I went to see Circus Joseph Ashton with the show class from circus. The money we raised was enough to buy us tickets to see Silver's Circus and Joseph Ashton. They were both really good except the magician in Silver's Dragged on a bit in parts, they had this terribly contrived peter pan act which was lame and boring, but the rest of the show was good. One of the Ashton Boys had a really good slack rope act, it was cool. Joseph Ashton also have their flying trapeze act, it was really good. Flying Trapeze always looks awesome, and the Ashtons did it very well. Both Shows had plenty of sparkles. We got to talk to some of the performers and have a look around afterwards, which was cool. We were asked to come and help bump out on the monday at the Ashton's, but I worked all Monday and couldn't help. But they were up in Joondalup so I don't know how I would of gotten there, Mum or Dad would have needed to give me a lift.

I also need to find or make a cat tail. I had one but I've lost it, I have a set of ears but no tail. It's for a costume for a mega cabaret at the end of june, so I have a few weeks to make the tail.

And on Saturday I'm seeing my friends from school again, I haven't seen them since the beginning of may so it will be very good to see them again, were going for mexican. YAY ^___^

I went to see Miss Saigon on Wednesday it was really good. The Americans evacuate Saigon in a helicopter, and they had speakers on the roof so that they could make it sound like the chopper was flying over us. It worked really well. Now I need o get the soundtrack off of my friend who went with me so that i can listen to it again.

work was busy yesterday, because of Good Friday we had two days worth of customers, in one day. I'm gradually working up to having enough savings to travel.

Circus was good, I finally managed to get hip lock, it has taken me ages. I'm very happy about that ^___^
We have a stumble through for the show today at 1, and a dress rehearsal tomorrow morning, then we perform on Sunday.

My friend is having an 1818 themed dress up party for her 18th birthday, so I've bought a pattern to make a regency dress. Biggest problem will be getting hold of some suitable material, spotlight has an even smaller range than they used to, despite moving to a bigger shop, which is also further away now, and hard to reach by bus.

I am eagerly awaiting the download of TW 2x11 Adrift. It looks awesome, and it has PC Andy. Hooray *fangirls*
And the bbc website online Torchwood games is disappointing me, it was ridiculously easy this week, I already had worked out the answer last week, and then it was just handed to you on a platter. *pout* I want something that will take sometime to work out, and give me something interesting to do.

I ate hot cross buns this morning, and we are having salmon tonight for dinner, I love salmon. And I do like easter despite not believing in Jesus having risen from the grave, unless... maybe it was Jack.

I went to see Miss Saigon on Wednesday it was really good. The Americans evacuate Saigon in a helicopter, and they had speakers on the roof so that they could make it sound like the chopper was flying over us. It worked really well. Now I need o get the soundtrack off of my friend who went with me so that i can listen to it again.

work was busy yesterday, because of Good Friday we had two days worth of customers, in one day. I'm gradually working up to having enough savings to travel.

Circus was good, I finally managed to get hip lock, it has taken me ages. I'm very happy about that ^___^
We have a stumble through for the show today at 1, and a dress rehearsal tomorrow morning, then we perform on Sunday.

My friend is having an 1818 themed dress up party for her 18th birthday, so I've bought a pattern to make a regency dress. Biggest problem will be getting hold of some suitable material, spotlight has an even smaller range than they used to, despite moving to a bigger shop, which is also further away now, and hard to reach by bus.

I am eagerly awaiting the download of TW 2x11 Adrift. It looks awesome, and it has PC Andy. Hooray *fangirls*

I was supposed to be working today, but shifts got changed around again so now I'm working Wednesday morning, but I can't work the whole shift 'cause i am going to see Miss Saigon and it starts at ! and that is when the shift ends. So slight annoyance as I have nothing else to do today and I get less money. Oh well.

And on a completely unrelated note, I want it to be Thursday so I can download the next Torchwood episode, it has PC Andy in it. PC Andy it totally under used by the writers. So yeah, excuse my obsession with this show, Doctor Who had better come out soon after Torchwood ends or I might go into withdrawal. A new show might help but i don't think anything can properly take it's place.

Monday and Tuesday I am doing nothing but then I'm busy till next Monday odd that. easter w/e is the Fremantle street arts festival and I'm performing in it with circus so I have rehearsals fri and sat, before the show on sunday. It shall be awesome, it's a show about Pirates (who totally pwn ninjas) it can't get much more awesome than that. Although large pyrotechnics would help ^-^

I think I shall walk down to the café by the river for lunch, they do yummy toasted sandwiches.

The last time I posted an entry I was still in exams, it feels like ages since then, though it is only a fem months. Anyway exams done for good, and this year so far I have done very little, I spent most days watching videos until recently. Now I have a job though which means that I can't do the all day marathons where i watch a whole series, in two days or less. It's probably a good thing.

Being finished with school is good, but I miss the learning, I did my sisters maths homework, not for her, I'm not that nice, but I did it FOR FUN.

We have a show coming up for circus on Easter Sunday, it's part of the street arts festival in freo, so I am looking forward to that. The show is awesome, it's called Swashbuckle and I get to be a pirate. i and another girl have a dance off on stilts which is great fun. bootylicious while on stilts dressed as a pirate and a sailor, what could be better.

My torrent for Torchwood 2x09 is being slow so we can't watch it yet. *pout*