Sayonara Party and Kyoto

On Saturday was the AFS Sayonara Party. Max (France; he goes to my school) and Josefa (Chile) are with AFS, so I went to the event. I was supposed to meet Kei, Miwa, Laurent, and Addison at Hamamatsu train station. I saw Kei, but she had to go the bathroom and ended up missing the train. So I'm on the train by myself and finally saw Miwa so that was good. Kei, Laurent, and Addison got on the next train, and everything was fine. We met Max's host mom at Iwata train station, and she drove us to the event. Shaki (Austria) and Saki (she went to UK last year) were there, so it was really good to see them. Josefa did the most adorable Japanese dance ever. Then we all headed back to Hamamatsu to have dinner at Mein Schloss, which is a German restaurant. We had a really good time. I'm going to miss Josefa and Max so much!!!
Then early Sunday morning (yesterday), I went off to Kyoto to see some friends: Dylan (from Pennsylvania, we went to the same orientations last year), Annalisa (I sat next to her on the plane), and Maria (from Puebla, Mexico-- this was the first time meeting her. It was amazingly insanely fun. Kyoto Train Station is humongous; I still can't get over it. So I met Dylan and Annalisa there (Maria was busy) and we just wandered around Kyoto, took purikura, and sang karaoke. For dinner, we had Mexican and it was actually really, really good. We walked around Gion, the geisha district, afterwards but it was kind of a disappointment. There's like four old buildings and everything else is just normal. Then I slept over Dylan's house and the next morning we met Annalisa and Maria at the train station. We went to Inari Shrine, which is really famous. It's featured in the movie "Memoirs of a Geisha" and it's the place with all the hundreds red torii gates. It's ridonculously pretty. Then we went back to downtown Kyoto and sang our hearts out at karaoke. These past two days, I got introduced to the song "La Camisa Negra" by Juanese. I seriously think I am a better person because I know this song. But yeah. It was so much fun with Annalisa, Dylan, and Maria!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ASXzq1O9rrc&feature=related