Hello! Today on Wednesday we had our speech contest, and it was really awesome to listen to my friends speeches, of which many interesting topics were discussed in. My speech was about the reason why japanese watch television, and you can find the speech (in japanese) here: https://simonsocolow.com/writings/thereasonjapanesewatchtelevision. I was told by some of my very respected classmates that my speech was really interesting and a good speech. That made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I didn’t make it to the Friday speech contest day, but that’s ok. Then, after Wednesday class, we had an exchange with Kanazawa University High School which was really great. I think that this was a gifted and talented, or smart kids high school. Their English was very good. We played pictionary and talked about our lives, cultures, and what they wanted to do in the future. That was our last exchange, and the exchanges were one of my favorite parts about PII. You get to meet people! And I wrote ビットコイン (bitcoin) on the blackboard, spreading the important message of decentralized financial freedom. Then on Friday we had the final speech contest from the winners of the class speech contests on Wednesday. The speeches were all really awesome! And then Abureru-san and I won the award for being the best followers of the 日本語だけルール (Japanese only rule), which was cool. Then I won an award for helping to design the 2023 PII T-shirt (which I really wanted the great wave to be on). It was just me and one other person (Kun-san) who made T-shirt designs so it was kind of not a prestigious award. She also got the award. The prizes were two different types of erasable pens, which I hope to use in the future. Then I went with my friends (Meagan, Paoulo, Sameer-san) to karaoke and we stayed at a hotel because it was too late to go back to host families (and I live the farthest away from Kanazawa out of everyone in the program). That was really fun, and my first Japanese karaoke time! Then we went to Oyama jinja on the next day (today for me), and I bought a venasaur for my friend DP on the crew team, a cr2025 3v battery for my game boy pocket Pokemon blue catridge I bought in Akihabara so I can have save state, and earbuds. Tommorow I think I will go on a run with my host dad in the mountains, and finish at an onsen!