My feet are freezing...

...because I've got cold feet. Which I'm assuming is fairly normal this close to when I'll be leaving but I'm still terrified.

I forgot to post that I finally got my visa on Monday, but then I also figured that it wouldn't make that much of a difference if I told you guys then or later. Japan has the prettiest visa! For all I know all the AFS kids going to Spain, France, Italy, Russia, etc. may have prettier ones (hell, the U.S. might have a nicer one) but I personally am very content with mine aside from my ID picture. Thankfully it's in black and white and grainy so you can't see how hooligan-like I look. Anyway, it has a light pink background with a few cherry blossoms at the top and GAHSJKFLSJLGN it's so pretty. I would post a picture but I'm not sure that Japan would like that very much and I don't feel like running the risk of some creep finding it on here.

But yes, the visa pickup went well. This time, however, there was a Japanese family (with 2 adorable kids) and a young woman. I have no idea what either were there for because the family didn't talk and the woman was speaking Japanese so fast that the only thing I picked up was a bunch of very high-pitched "はい！はい．．．はい！！" (Yes! Mhmm... yes.)　Even though I'm hardly taller than most Japanese (5' 3") I still felt massive around this woman. And not even because of how much smaller she was, but because of how tiny her voice was. She made me sound like I was talking through a megaphone...

Aside from that... I started school yesterday. The number one thing that everyone asks me is, "Why are you here?" And they're no being rude; they're genuinely curious. One of my teachers that I talked to even said that. The answer is that I wanted to let my teachers know that I would be gone but would be back February 4th or 5th. That way if there was any work that I would be missing that first month they could prepare it before I got back.

Only 6 days left! Terrifying but so exciting at the same time!
-Ellie

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

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.