Leaving Soon

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH
I'M SO EXCITED!

Well then...

The Real Preparation

So, I'm leaving tomorrow.

I've had my stuff packed for about 4 days now. I just couldn't help myself. Supposedly packing early is also one of the commandments for packing light (I'm pretty sure I read that somewhere on that site). Anyway, I've got all the essentials. Several changes of clothes. A change of shoes. A swimsuit just in case. Candy. Drawing materials. Okay, I guess I'm not exactly "packing light," but that doesn't mean I haven't used some suggestions from light packers.

Sitting Around, Doing Nothing

Hello again, readers! I bring to you a relatively unexciting post!


Passport

Well, it may have seemed like a terrifying process at first, but here I am, about 6 weeks later, with my passport.

Ta-da!

It feels pretty good to finally hold it. Apparently I'm supposed to sign my full name on the line above the ID page. They did specify full name, so I suppose I shouldn't use my normal signature, just to be safe. I'm kind of nervous though. What if I screw it up and it comes out sloppy? This is some hardcore stuff!

I suppose I'm pretty much ready now. There are a couple forms I'm able to fill out now that I have my passport, and I still need to pack, but it's kind of early for that :(

Orientation the Second

Today was my long-awaited second (and last) orientation meeting. I now have all the information I will have about the program until I meet everybody at the airport on June 3.


The Room

You are tearing me apart, Lisa!

One of the first things we talked about today was the room assignments. He wrote out a bunch of room numbers on the board, like such:

101 (3) 洋室

102 (3) 和室

201 (2)

202 (2)

203 (2)

204 (2)

__________

和 1 (2)

洋 2 (2)

洋 3 (2)

The line there separated the two different dorms, the boy's and girls' dorms. The number in parentheses was there to represent how many people each room accommodates. 

I immediately started to get excited when I saw that 和室 (wah-sheetsu). I had originally assumed all of the rooms would be 洋室 (yo-sheetsu), since the dorm is called 和交寮 (wah-ko-ryo), which roughly means "Japanese exchange dorm."

Oh wait, you don't know Japanese? A washitsu is a Japanese-style room (as opposed to the western-style yoshitsu), with tatami mats and futons that you get to lay out every night and put away every morning. I'm not sure what is going to be available in this particular room, but traditionally you basically change the room as needed. In the day, you might put out, for instance, a chabudai. A chabudai, being one of those low tables with floor cushions (zabuton) that you may or may not have heard of.

Yeah, kinda like that.

The Places I Will Go

My favorite part about this blog is that I can vent all I want about how excited I am to go, but I don't have to annoy anybody who might not care. Everybody reading this is reading it because they care at least somewhat (I hope). My first post wasn't a very good introduction, so perhaps I'll explain myself a little now.


Phase I

This bulk of this trip is a study abroad program that I'm doing through the University of Utah. The Japanese school is called Shitennoji. There is a map at the top of that page I just linked. It is wrong. This is a bird's eye view of the school:

Image from Google

First Post!

It has begun.

Actually, it really hasn't begun. This blog is my first blog, the main purpose of which is to document my exploits in Japan this summer. I am still mentally and physically preparing for the trip, which begins on May 31.

I will make a few scattered posts between now and then, partially to get used to blogging, and partially because getting ready is part of the experience. So, without further ado...