富士山を食べたいよ！(I want to eat Mt. Fuji!)

  

    "I want to eat Fuji-san! He looks delicious, doesn't he? Just like ice cream, right?" Ji In, a study abroad student from Korea states with odd simplicity in perfect Japanese. Her long hair and glasses and smiling face give off a good vibe. She smiles at me and asks as if it's the most normal statement, "Right?!" 

  

   I laugh and I agree completely. I can already picture the cherry and hot fudge on top just waiting to be gobbled up. We then proceed to talk about our favorite ice creams as both our stomachs begin to grumble in response to the tasty thoughts. 

    

    This happy go lucky fluent gaijin is my roommate. 

   As we're standing in line for dinner, I hear someone mention vegetarian food. It's the girl next to me. She's Malaysian with the cutest little red hat. We eat our vegetarian meals together talking about Japanese cooking and まめ（mame, Japanese beans). Later that night, it starts to snow. Adorably, it's her first time. As soon as we realize it's snowing, we both just start running towards the door, throw on our shoes on, and next thing we know, we are in a snowball fight! She is adorable in the snow. Her face lights up like a child's (or my sister's) face on Christmas. Even though she's wearing jeans, she lies down and swiftly makes a snow angel.

   

   Next I meet a girl from Vietnam. I'm so excited and still suffering from PTSD from the food that I just start word vomiting all about the tasty things I want to eat. I attempt to explain the orgasm rolls in Japanese, proceed to switch to English and still can't figure out how to talk about my favorite rolls. I even start to tell how you have to fight to get them and the price of the rolls, but no luck, she has no idea what I'm talking about. I promise to send her a picture and get her to promise me that if she hasn't eaten them, she has to when she goes back to Hanoi.

   

    Then there is Tomo-chan, a Japanese high school student who knows "I scream for ICE CREAM!" She is always dancing and always laughing. She also speaks fluent amazing English and Spanish. 

   

  And one cannot forget sweet Fai-chan's from Mexico. She literally didn't speak a word of Japanese before she came 6 months ago, but now she has become so good! And just from talking with her host family and listening to Hippo tapes. We talk in Spanish about traveling, Japan, and of course, food. 

    I spent the next 24 hilarious hours in a small town near Fuji-san at a Hippo retreat.  Hippo, a worldwide club that I heard about from my host mom, is a club that works on learning languages without books and with a special focus in traveling and doing homestays in other countries. At the retreat, we attended workshops learning different languages, we danced, we ate, and we listened and learned from each other's respective travel stories and life experiences.  I personally just had a great time making friends and getting to know these amazing people, who although we didn't share a common native language, we were able to communicate and enjoy each other's company. Thinking back on it, it feels like I spent at least a week with these girls, but sitting here and actually counting the hours we spent together, it quite literally was only twenty four.

  I'm glad that I got to eat Fuji-san. He was delicious.