March 17: Presentations & Karaoke

I am going to backtrack a bit to fill you in on what happened while I was offline.
March 17th was our last full day with Group 9, our first group. This was also the our first presentation to the entire group. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we found out once we arrived in Japan that we were expected to give our presentations in Japanese. We jumped up onstage and hit it out of the park - so to speak. OK, so our language skills weren't perfect, but with the help of my host family, I was able to do it. Everyone did an amazing job and even some of the GSE committee members said that it was an amazing improvement over the first time they heard it!
After dinner and the banner exchange, some of the group headed over to a local Karaoke bar near the hotel. This was such a blast! Terry, Sheila, Amy and I joined about 15 Rotary members to sing the night away (well - at least an hour or so!). It was such a great time, I sang another duet with the same Rotary member as before and also sang songs with Terry and Amy. It was so much fun to watch Terry let loose. He even donned a couple of wigs! This place came with costumes for their Karaoke fans!
The evening wrapped up at 10pm (closing time for the bar) and my host father picked me up. I felt bad about abandoning them to join the others, but it was so much fun and a real bonding experience.