fun with O-kaasan

Funny, half of me feels overwhelmed with cultural activities, making new friends, homework, speaking in class, the adventure of living with my host family, and etc. But the other half feels bored in a way, like i`ve been cheated, like other people`s experiences with their host families sound superior to mine. Some kid i talked to got taken to his host dad`s friend`s mochi shop and got taught to make red bean rice cakes. Another girl`s family took her to the Kombu Seaweed Hall, where everything is made of seaweed and you can try free samples of numerous kombu products. Yes, made directly from the stuff of dreams. What does my host dad do? He watches loud tv after dinner and goes to sleep at 8:30. He does wake up around 4, and he is pretty old, but still!
I also feel like i am always saying the wrong things. I`ve been telling my mom the phrase whenever i see her working extra hard and huffing and puffing (which is nearly all the time), because that`s the phrase we used at work in Tokushima when we`ve all been working hard. Yesterday, my host sister (one of the 5 children of ma and pops, this one 30-something with a kid) was visiting and said a less honorific to me because i had come home from school. I didn`t know how to respond properly so i asked her about it, and we began to delve into the deep dark annals of Japanese honorific language usage. When i asked if my semi-honorific was okay to say to O-kaasan, O-kaasan herself put down her dishes and chimed in, "No, that`s not at all appropriate to say to O-kaasan!" I was surprised, and asked her daughter if this was true. It turns out that it`s only okay to use among people of the same group as you, such as co-workers, and not to your O-kaasan. Turning to face me, O-kaasan then said, "Actually, you are the first foreign student to use that term with me. All the others just said thank you." I pleaded my case by reminding her that at my level of language study, while i speak many words, terms, and phrases are floating around in my head, all shouting simultaneously to choose them next. I told her that the other kids probably just didn`t know how to say it any other way, or were too scared to try. This seemed to sate her, but she warned me like so, half-kidding and half-i-don`t-know : "That might be so, but when i hear things like that i am driven to rage" (then a little ambiguous wink).
I am coming to the conclusion that i can`t take any of this too seriously, and letting little things get to me will only result in self-destruction. I must make the most out of these situations and learn from them, otherwise i will be wasting my time here. We had a debate about whether or not to give tax money from working citizens to the unemployed, and i defended an unpopular point, however poorly grammatically and difficult to understand, but nevertheless. I see the progress, but the road is a bumpy one.