Well since I haven't been on here in a few months, and the editing layout has changed quite a bit, I'm hoping that I'm doing this right and that this post ends up on my blog.

So. As you can probably tell from the date right underneath this post, I haven't written anything on here since February. I figured that since I have been freed from school for a few weeks now, I could find some time in my oh so busy (please note my sarcasm) summer to update anyone that's reading this on what's going on with AFS and myself.

On the 31st of May (my last day of school, woohoo!) my mom texted me while I was in line at school to return my books that AFS Japan had finally accepted me and that I really was/am going in about a month and a half! :D I had to severely restrain myself from screaming to anyone in close proximity to me that I would be flying halfway around the world this coming semester.

Consequently, I have acquired about 5 different books on Japanese in order to prepare myself as best I can to survive while I'm away. My most-used books include a book called 'Genki' that a friend of mine's older sister lent to me, and a Japanese grammar book by the brand Barron's (which, by the way, saved my BUTT at the end of April/beginning of May when I had to study for my AP Psychology test). The 'Genki' book I use mostly for kanji learning since it has 100+ kanji with step-by-step instructions on brush strokes and such, and the Barron's book has proven very helpful in helping me to understand how the HELL the Japanese form their sentences. (Curse you, SVO languages for handicapping me so!) Here's a link to the Barron's book and here's the Genki one.

I still haven't received an exact departure date so I haven't been able to pinpoint a time/buy a ticket for LA (my gate city). It's somewhere around the 20th of August so, soon enough! The only downside to this whole thing is that Japan is taking an awfully long time to send me back my application confirming that yes, I can apply for a visa. As such, I cannot visit my family in Mexico for the second summer in a row (unless it gets here SOON), and I'm very sad. :( But, hopefully they can understand that this is a huge deal. And who knows? Maybe next year I'll spend most of the summer down there since I've been wanting to do that to regain my fluency from when I was seven (it's ridiculous; I spoke without even thinking about it before until recently).

Let's see.... I don't have my family yet, but that's to be expected. I'm just assuming that I won't know until I'm in Japan, so if I do get that information sooner I'll be one happy duck. (Did I seriously just call myself a duck?)

Now, since I've been putting off my summer school homework by writing this post instead, I should probably get to that. Unfortunately, I say that, but I'll probably finish this post and switch right on over to my StumbleUpon tab. :) Sorry Mr. Rende, there's more important matters to attend to at the moment.

-Ellie

P.S. I PROMISE that I'll update more frequently when I actually have something to write about. Lately, not much has been going on so I haven't had all that much material to work with.