Peace speech day

So I have not been blogging lately because I have been very busy (and tired of) practising a speech for a speech contest. This speech contest is a yearly event held in the Genbaku Dome, Hiroshima Peace Memorial. This year's theme was peace, and only foreigners studying in Japan could participate. My host school wanted me to do this speech contest, even though I really did not feel like participating since I have not been in Japan long enough to do a speech about such a complicated theme as peace. But I entered (kind of against my own will though), and this last week I have been practising pronounciation and especially intonation (difficult!) every day. Finally the day for the contest came, and there were 15 exchange students entering, mostly around my age, from every part of the world.

 Before and after: To the left Nastasia and me being very nervous, and to the right Francois, Natalie, Nastasia and me, finished and happy.

And guess what? I came in third place! Second place was Natalie from Costa Rica and first place was Nurika, the other exchange student at my school! There were a money price too, and tomorrow Nurika and I am gonna celebrate in the library during our self-study hours. 

My host family came and listened to, they are the best people ever! Happy face

 Afterwards a smaller groups of the contestants went to Natasia's bunkasai, school festival, in Hiroshima. Her school was very big, and there were a lot of people, and us being a bunch of foreigners, we were being stared at constantly. I will never get used to the attention I get for just looking like I do.

 We went to a class who had party-games with a nintendo theme.

 A class had also made their own version of VS ARASHI (they called it VS TAKESHI), which is a popular tv-show here in Japan, starring what currently probably is Japan's most popular band: Arashi. I watch it every Thursday, hihi.

Yamapi on VS Arashi

 They recreated the games, like for example the game on the picture here->, where things fall down on these poles and the person have to catch them (hard to explain) Japanese people are really creative.

All these people were great, and even though I just met them for one day, I made a lot of new, cool friends. 

And of course we did purikura. I can proudly (...) say I decorated this pic, notice the panda. 

Love from Norway to New Zealand, Russia, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Germany, Kazakhstan and Malaysia.