For once, school sounds exciting.

PLEASE READ: I've been getting an email from AFS for the past week or so about being a 'welcome family' or a host family to incoming exchange students from all over the world. Unfortunately, the school in my area doesn't accept foreign exchange students so my mom can't volunteer to be one. :( SO, I figured I would post about it and maybe someone would see it and be able to help these kids out. Basically, a welcome family is not the student's permanent family, they just house them for 6-12 weeks while AFS finds a permanent home for them. Which makes it sound like they're homeless (and they kind of are when they get here), so help the homeless and look into it! If you're interested, go here. Just plug in your zip code and it gives you a list of students coming to your area. July 26th is the last day for placements according to the email, so hurry!

Alright, now that that's done, I'll update on my exchange. Nothing super big has happened recently. The only thing worth mentioning is that I got an email officially stating that the Hattoris are actually my host family and I finally got my school information! I'm not going to give the exact name because who knows who's reading this, but I will say that it's a school of about 1,000 students (a third the size of where I go now), boys and girls attend, and it's not religiously affiliated. The information sheet also says that school ends their summer vacation on August 23rd, which is the day that I leave. O_O I'm not sure if that means that I'll be starting school the day after I arrive, but if it does... I'll probably still be super jet-lagged and sleepy that day. 

My school offers baseball, softball, basketball, volleyball, soccer, badminton, handball, table-tennis, tennis, Judo, swimming, Kendo, Kyudo, climbing, track & field, and rugby. I was secretly hoping that somehow they would have figure skating, but I guess most schools anywhere in the world wouldn't have that kind of facility on campus. I'm thinking either soccer or track & field because those are the only two that I've ever seriously participated in or shown talent in. As far as clubs go, the English Speaking Society caught my attention. I'm still debating whether that would be a smart move or not. On the one hand, I could help people practice their English, but on the other, it's probably not going to help me improve my Japanese as quickly as it could. There's also a class trip that was mentioned where I would be going to Tokyo and Nagano, but it's 8,000 yen (approximately $1,000), and I'm not sure that I can afford it, especially after already spending so much money on the actual exchange. And I really shouldn't complain because I'm so lucky to even be going to another country for 5 months. Seriously, how many 17-year-olds can say that they've ever studied in another country?

I probably should've broken those two paragraphs up even further so you didn't have to stare at two huge blocks of text, but I got carried away with what I was writing. :)

More news hopefully coming soon. Only 30 days, 18 hours and 38 minutes left! (did I mention that I have a countdown set on my phone?)

-Ellie

Interview Updates

Hello!

I've decided to procrastinate against my English essay and write another post.

To whoever actually read my last post will know that last Monday (the 13th), I had an interview by an AFS worker interviewer... person... and I'm happy to say that it actually went REALLY well. I wasn't really nervous. Like, at all. I thought that she would walk in the door and I would internally freak out a little. However, I was surprisingly calm, and as far as I could tell, she believed me to be an okay person. And thankfully. The woman was really nice, though. And she said that she liked talking to me in particular, so, fingers crossed! :) She said that we should hear whether AFS U.S. has accepted me really soon, and I should know about AFS Japan by around mid-April about. Yayayayayayayyy! I'm so excited you have no idea. This has been my dream since 4th grade, no exaggeration whatsoever. My second choice is France, but Japan would literally make the rest of my life worth everything.

Anyway, this wasn't meant to be super long; I just wanted to update about the interview. I'm hoping that news comes soon!

-Ellie

My Life is a Hot Mess

In less than 24 hours I will be face-to-face with my interviewer who will hopefully help in sending me off to Japan.

Has it really sunk in yet? That this could be the first step to a semester of amazing-ness? Not quite. It'll probably hit me when the lady walks into my living room and I'm like "Oh. I might just be going now."

I know that nothing is for sure right now, but a girl can hope, right? No? Well, I'm gonna anyway. ;P

I feel kind of silly for starting a blog that I might have to delete if everything doesn't go as planned, but the more I thought about it, the more appealing it sounded, and the urge finally caught me. At 11:30. On a school night. When I have to be up at 4am to go figure skating. Oh the joys of life.

So I should probably explain what my blog will (hopefully) be chronicling, right? I applied for a semester-long program in Japan through AFS, and it seems like I've been waiting A YEAR to get an interview and get the ball rolling... but I think it's only been something like... a week and a half since I submitted the application? Oh gosh. I only decided to do this for sure very recently, even though I'd been thinking about it since Freshman year of high school. I'm a Junior now. I am procrastination at its finest, let me tell you.

So yes, I would be going to Japan for my first semester of my Senior year, and even though I initially wanted to go for a year, ever since I was forced to go for a semester, I've realized that it'll be nice this way too. I just missed the deadline to go for the year. By something like 2 weeks. I was very upset... but hey, at least now I won't miss graduation. If I graduate on time.

Did I mention that if all goes well and I do end up going I might not graduate on time? >.< Yeah. My school's being kind of a butt about the whole foreign exchange program. :/ I need to go to a school that meets certain requirements in order for my school to take the credits I'll earn over in Japan. Oh, and I have to get a semester of AMERICAN Economics while I'm there. Yeah, like Japan's going to have that. So, I'm taking that over the summer whether I go or not, and I'll have that out of the way.

The only thing that's worrying me about getting accepted by Japan's AFS is the fact that I have a tattoo. When I realized that they might not be too cool with that I researched tattoos in Japan because when you think about it, how often do you hear about tattoos being super popular in Japan? Never. That's because they're associated with gangs, and I guess that if I went around showing mine off I'd look like I could manually tear your limbs off. Did I mention I'm 5' 3"? Geez, if only I COULD do that much damage. No one would EVER mess with me. Unfortunately, I don't think I could do much more than hurt myself while trying to punch someone else. Yes, that HAS happened before. No judging.

Anyway, the thing's pretty small and I hardly think a sunflower says yakuza: beware.

Darn. I just remembered that I have to clean my room tomorrow. T_T My room literally looks like I was attacked and I kicked everything in my struggle to get away. Or worse, like my cat got in here and decided to knock everything in sight over.

Wow. I definitely thought I wrote more than I did. Well, it IS 12:00. And that means I'm going to go to bed. Or nap. Considering it'll only be for 4 hours. Woohoooo!
Wish my luck tomorrow, if anyone ever reads this. Even if it's a year from know, because, you know, good thoughts like that can time-travel, and I could use as many good thoughts from the future as possible. So send 'em my way! :D

And I'm sorry if you fell asleep at your computer, but I appreciate your resilience to incredibly boring blog posts. And if you DID poke your eyes out with a hot poker....
I'm not paying for eye surgery OR a funeral.

Peaaaaace :)
Ellie