One month in Japan in one sitting get ready.

Okay, so I know I haven't written in a long while considering what I have been up to. I went through a patch where i was so frustrated with a situation i didn't want to portray that to anyone else and make them think i wasn't having a great time because it is quite the opposed. i am loving my trip and those simple things that were frustrating me are in the past and are still in Japan. it may sound like i didn't like Japan but that is not the case at all i love Japan and i love the people there i just needed freedom that i never was able to have. but that is a long story and for now i just want to tell you all about what i have been up to.
i guess i really left you all in China. a little in Japan but not too much. so where to begin in Japan... I suppose i will start in Ibaraki... I was lucky enough to be placed with the Ebata family from Shizu. this village of 10,000 people was about an hour and a half from the school by train. as many of you know i am not a morning person so for a month i acted and survived on very little sleep. i would wake up at about 5:15 every morning leave the house by 6:10 and would get home around 7-7:30 sometimes later, seldom earlier. at times i really wanted to do things with my family but really there was no time during the day to do anything. even though it was impossible to really do anything with my host family i got to experience more of the country life and the mountains that others didn't. My host grandma lived next door and had a strawberry crop, amazingly tasty and amazing strawberry jam. my room was a traditional rice paper on the windows and doors and i was sleeping on a tatami mat really it wasn't too bad but in the end i was really missing a bed. My family also had a set of dishes for each person and you never mixed the dishes or the chopsticks, really i never understood this and it was only in my family that this happened. oh well it was a family, cultural thing that i just adjusted to and actually learned the proper place for each dish the chopsticks i had down in one night hahaha. I have also learned that i under no circumstances like soy bean anything, and i mean anything. i don't like mizo soup, i don't like nato, i don't like tofu, i don't like Japanese sweets, nothing. for quite a long time i kept quiet about this but finally my mom saw me choke down a piece of tofu and asked and i broke down and told her i didn't like anything soybean. she felt bad for making me eat it for so long i felt bad that i made a face about it. but in the end we decided that it was funny and they would still jokingly offer any kind of soybean they could just to see my reaction. I suppose i should tell you about my family at this point... i had a Mom who wanted me to call her Haha (informal way of saying mom in Japanese), i had a grandma who always ate supper with us and i had three sisters Souri 20, Tomomi 19, and Chacki 14 (pronounced Jackie). my sisters all had different personalities that you just had to love. my grandma is an amazing woman who doesn't speak a work of English and i don't speak a word of Japanese so we of course could communicate just fine much to the disgust of my middle sister Tomomi who treated to stop speaking English because grandma and i could communicate better than her and me sometimes. but all i can really say is that i had an amazing family that i will cherish forever.
School... well that was interesting. we had classes really all day which of course that is what we should have right. well it was hard to be in class that long. i really wanted to just explore and experience Japan which wasn't quite happening to my liking. unlike China where we would have class in the morning and field trip it up all afternoon with an annoying tour guide we would be stuck on campus and not be able to go anywhere. we did have some fun though we learned about culture and language and we got to try our hand at haiku which i must say i mastered i won the first prize for mine which i wrote in chapel apparently it followed the proper Japanese style of Haiku, i really found this humorous. we got to play the Japanese Harp thingys that really no one remembers what they are called trust me i just asked, haha. it was interesting but it seemed really flat to me. we learned some of the different Japanese folktales, interesting but weird, it was by far our best class though. we had this class that dealt with mixing cultures which in my opinion and the opinions of my classmates was a complete waste of time, it may have helped the Japanese students that were in the class but for us it was horrible, they were just making us sit through what we already experienced through out our whole trip and with our families. it wasn't in anyway helpful. oh well what can we do. Japanese class was very overwhelming and difficult. our first day we walked in and she just started speaking Japanese to us, and was wanting us to read this hiriagana that we didn't know at all. and still don't to tell you the truth. she kind of dropped it after she saw how far behind we were from where she wanted us to be. but there is nothing really we could do about that.
now for our day trips... Niko, this was an amazing place. there is a beautiful waterfall then we went to this shrine area. it really sucked that we were so rushed because we missed a lot really it should have been a two day excursion. on our way up to the waterfall is this winding road that there is a Japanese poem that helps students learn the katakana sounds. This is one thing that my grandma and i really connected over and had a great conversation this road and my sister got mad we so understood each other that it was funny. we had to take our shoes off to see some of the shire stuff. that was weird. Nikko is the place that has the monkeys the see no evil hear no evil and speak no evil so that was cool.
we got to go to an elementary school and play with them it was so much fun we also spent time with some grade 7 and some grade 8ers so much fun. i loved spending time in the schools.
we went to the aquarium, and i pet a shark ya you read that right i pet a shark. and i saw a dolphin show and i saw penguins. so many things... i loved it. NOT as good as the Great Barrier Reef trust me i have seen it. haha
we are also the next OC chour. where ever we go it seems like we are asked to sing and we are getting better and better haha.
there are so many things to say about japan and i really love it i just had a hard time for a while so i refused to say anything and i kept it bottled up.

keyboard troubles 2

oh and find yourself lucky that the post is in english because for the first little bit i didn:t know how to change the language it is a little button that is where the escape key is and the way to change it to another asian language is next to the space bar that is tiny. ok i am done ranting about my keyboard (I think)

just a side note

okay so in my blogs you may have noticed that i never use apostrophes instead i use colons. i do have a reason for that. I DON:T KNOW WHERE THE APOSTROPHE SIGN IS!!! i have looked and looked and i can:t find it so the colon is where the apostrophe is suppose to be so that is why i use it. hope you are all having a great day and not having any keyboard confusion good news though i did find the @ sign. love you all, andrea

i just don:t know

So i have been trying to write this for about a week, and i am finding it really hard to put into words what i am feeling. i think it is full overwhelmization. i love my host family though they laugh at me a lot. and i love japan though i don:t, even a little bit, understand the culture. i wake up at 5-5:30 every morning because i live an hour and a half away from the school and my sister has class at 8:40 and if we left any later than 6:10 we would miss our train and as it only runs once an hour that time in the morning it she would be late. this morning on the train she struggled with the sentence I am sorry you have to wake up so early, and yes i am tired but i feel that it is worth it to get up and go. not like i have a choice but even if i did i think i would choose to go with her. Oh the reason i don:t have a choice is because it is a 10 min car ride before i get on the train, so not walking distance.
one of the first things my family did when i got to their house was to give me a gift. my family chose a practical gift that is much appreciated. they gave me a set of chopsticks that are very nice. and then they showed me my dishes. each member of the family has their own set of dishes that they use every meal. i will admit at first it was a little weird, not gonna lie. but now it is just getting to be familiar and i think i may be ok with it.
there are so many things that are different about japan and i don:t think that i can justly tell you everything that i have observed. besides observations are unique to each person so you may have to observe it for yourself.
even as i sit here i am so overwhelmed with so many things to write and not knowing how to say it. this week has been jampacked with so many things classes new people everything. my japanese language class is so overwhelming that i want to cry, and i am not the only one. i want to be able to communicate but i can:t due to my lack of words and the fact that to me everything sounds the same. i want to be able to join in on conversations with my family but only one really speaks english and even hers is poor. i want to know if i offended them. i want to leave my bed out. yes make it but i don:t want to fold it up and put it away every morning. i want to know how to use the shower properly. this one is difficult for me. and i know this trip is not all about me though that is what it seems like after that paragraph so lets try and sound optimistic. my family is amazing. i try a lot of new foods that are interesting. i live in a village that is in the foothills it is beautiful. my room is the old fashion type with rice paper walls and straw mat floors. i have got to go into a jr high class that was a lot of fun.
like i said before i really don:t know what to write but i want to tell you everything at the same time. i just don:t know where to start or what to write. the best way for me to tell you things is for you to ask questions you can do it here or in an email. andrea.sanders@oc.edu. i will do my best to answer.
love you all,
andrea

another thought on the toilets

so on top of the toilet there is usually a tap with a basin under it. yes, you are suppose to wash your hands in this water. the tap fills the toilet tank so when you wash your hands you are actually putting your germs into the toilet water for the next person. just a disgussting　thought to make your day a little brighter.
more to come on this topic i am sure.

bathrooms part 2

JAPAN
so there is one major thing that i must share with the world... I hate heated toilet seats!!! i am trying to figure out their purpose, but alas i have found none that would actually work for Japan. While i was on one of these toilets i was trying to figure out what they were for and i have come up with one explanation. I have decided that the toilets are heated so that when you go outside in the middle of winter and freeze your butt, you know the kind that freezes you to the bone and you just feel the cold radiating off you your butt, that is what the toilets are for, thought i don:t know why they are on in the summer or fall.
ok i will have to find get a picture of one and show it to you, but these toilets are scary. there are buttons and knobs and many things i am too afraid to touch because i don:t know what it will do to me. i am scared of the toilet not gonna lie.
did you know that you have toilet slippers. i am surprised there isn:t an epidemic of athletes foot. these slippers you put on just to go pee. and everyone shares them. it is rather bazaar.
half the time there is no soap in the bathroom it is weird
ok so the shower is kinda weird too... there is a shower room. you have a huge tub in it too. but i think you are suppose to just take a shower in the room and not worry about the floor there is no curtain again it is just weird it is another picture thing.
good news there is toilet paper.
haha
i think that is all i have for now but i am sure there will be another Japan bathroom blog.
love you all.

an over view of China

I spent a grand total of three weeks in China, and loved, every moment if it. From the people to my group to my classes to just everything in general, except maybe the smell, and never having clean clothes. It was the longest shortest three weeks of my life and i cant believe it is over. We toured Beijing, Xian and Shanghai. We traveled to each of these places via train, the first ride was 12 hours and the second was 22 hours. We experianced China sleeping cars. it really makes the travel time fly when you can sleep. you know when you are sure you have learned many life lessons in an area but when you go to write it you just cant put it into words. that is where i am right now. China was an amazing experiance and i would love to be able to say everything that it has taught me but i dont know if i can. i can say it has taught me patience but i don:t know how, and it has taught me that i am stronger than i know, but i cant tell you why. it is really just a jumble in my mind and i can:t get it out. but i want to be able to share what i know and what i have learned. so lets just try and tell some of my expericances that may have contributed.

Beijing was totally amazing i saw and expericanced so much in 10 days i took classes so i learned from the Chinese people what they think that americans should know (they didn:t know that they were talking to a canadian too). we had a tour guide that was a pain in the royal butt. she liked to take us to tourist traps that we couldn:t afford. In the end we ended up with gifts from the travel agency as an apology for having to deal with these situations. I love walking in the rain and got to experiance that a few times in a unfamiliar city it was amazing. i went to lunch with these Chinese girls that wanted to practice their english and make new friends, i didn:t notice the smell as much in Beijing as much as Xian but i am leaning that it is not the smell that makes it different it is the cleanliness that goes with it or lack there of. i found that street vendors make really good breakfast even if you don:t know what you are ordering. Ordering is a completley different thing than North America. we all noticed that as soon as you walk into a restraunt youd better know what you want to eat because they will linger over you until you are ready to order. sometimes pointing is not the best option especially with the drink menu because you can end up with things you don:t want to drink. same with ordering supper though because you will end up with different things that you dont know what are like cows tongue. very chewy. you will sometimes end up with things that you didn:t know that you ever wanted to try and it isn:t too bad. Beijing was a good place for us to start because it offered us some time to get use to the difference in　culture.

by the time we got to Xian we were somewhat used to China, well as use to it as you can get. we were accepting of our tour guide but it also helped that she was like 100 times better than the last, and didn:t sink into her seat and cry every other day, NOTE we didn:t to anything to make her cry. we were so tired that we just wanted to sleep but we had full days of activities that we had to just keep going and not worry about what we really wanted. we went around the city wall on bicycles, we saw the warriors we went to the wild goose pagoda. and to this place that had alot of water things. funny story acutally, we were suppose to be watching this water show where the fountains would dance to the music and well we couldn:t see the water so one of the guys in my group started to do interperative dancing he drew a crowd of 250plus people and this was just the way we deal with things. xian was also alot dirtier than beijing and acutally it was more what i expected to see when i thought of China. it is one of those places you loved and hated all at the same time. from xian　we also went to a farming villiage (not a village) and we stayed with families there. my roommates and i didn:t get to really know our family because of the language barrier but we really enjoyed our stay. we got to go to a school and spend half an hour with the little grade one students, this was by far my favorite part of my trip so far. i think people really started to understand why my major is what it is. and that night we were invited to the villiage dance, where i met Hamama, a seven year old angel. i had so much fun with her. when we got back to xian we sent some mail and picked up our laundry that we had done and well i don:t think the laundry place believed in a dryer so they put our wet clothes in bags and by the time we opened each bag our laundry stunk. so taht was a waste of money booo.

We left for Shaghai, this is the largest city in the world and i feel like i could wander it and not really get lost or if i do i could find where i am fairly quickly. this is the place where everyone started to really get sick. there were a few cases before hand but over all shanghai was the worst to start getting sick. our sponser Ryan ended up getting a feavor that lasted 5 days and he still doesn:t look the greatest. and another guy Skyler, developed a pancreatic attack once we got on the plane to kyoto he is still in the hopsital in kyoto while the rest of us have gone on to toyko. Keep him in your prayers.

All in all i loved China but i am sick of the food and i am glad to be gone. i think that we are just too tired to really respond greatly to china right now but when we look back later it will be an awesome part of our overall trip. i think that i am one of the most optomistic people in the group regarding the overall feel of china. i am glad i went and i want to go back but i think i need to do some exploring of the places myself, i need to really get to know the people, this is what our group really feels was lacking in our time in china, we all would have really liked to be able to communicate with the people and get to know them. i also think i need to see more of the world to fully appreciate what i have seen there. i need to know that every place is different and i need to feel like i have made a difference. i really want to do that. making a difference in one persons life would have been great but if i didn:t get a chance to really talk to any one than how can i make a difference. maybe i can change that in the future and since i know that i want to change that then maybe the rest of my trip will be more fruitful. i would not trade the time i had in china for anything on earth and i think that is why i have become a stronger person i know what i want to get out of the rest of my trip, relationships with the people of the countries i visit. WOW!!! i didn:t know that is what i wanted until i wrote it.

Xi'an

I fell in love with a little girl the other night. i really wanted to put her in my suitcase and bring her home. she was this little 5-7 year old i am not totally sure but her english was amazing. we were in a little villiage, as small as a chinese villiage can be so actually really big but where we were looked smaller, because it was on the edge of the village and was gated. we each stayed with families four of us to one family. it is a government run thing but it was really cool. we got to go and be in a classroom with a bunch of grade one students which was amazing, and i really wanted to stay longer. i met the little girl that night at the dance they put on for us she came up to me and wanted to know who i was and if i wanted to play i made her dance and then we played a game i still can't play the game and we worked on if for like an hour. she and i would take turns blaming the other who's fault it was that we failed yet again. the last few days had been so full but i really loved it. we finally had a good tourguide that didn't take us to all these tourist traps that none of us can afford. we ended up at one but she told us that we didn't have to feel like we had to buy anything but if we did it was half price cause we are students. she took us there so we could see how the tarocotta warriors were made (for replica use). so that was not so bad as our old one, who took us everwhere to make us spend money. we saw the acutal tarocotta warriors that was pretty cool it is hard for me to imagine a guy to spent 40 years creating his tomb and making others make it for him. it was remarkable. i am in shanghai right now and since there was so much to rememeber and i can't remember it right now it will have to wait till later i know i said that last time about beijing but maybe i will actually tell you some day. just ask for more post and i may write more.
love you all, and miss you.

So i have been in Xi'an for 2 days now and i have so much to say about the remainder of Beijing and the beginning of Xi'an but the end of Xi'an. we leave for the country side tomorrow, which is exciting we are going to a farming community and we get to stay with some families. i think 4 to a house so that should be fun, and very interesting with the language barrier.
Last monday we went to the Hutongs which are the houses everyone hears about that are many families to very little space. it was interesting. we first went to a couples apartment he is a art professor at a university and she is retired they are 4th generation dwellers which is amazing. after that we went to some other peoples houses and they served us supper it was pretty good or at least the house i went to apparently the other house wasn't as good. we got to go through the area on rickshaws so that was fun. That night i downloaded pictures so you can all see those at http://photos.oc.edu then go to international studies abroad and then pac rim find my name and there are my pictures.
on tuesday i went to the gardens and well i don't know exactly what we did that day i can't remember we have been so busy that i feel like i have been here for months but then again it has been so short. it is a weird feeling. but i do know that that night we went to hard rock cafe, and ended up soaked. we got on the bus and someone said that it was our stop so we got off in the pouring rain and it wasn't our stop we were only half way there (to the subway) so we walked in the rain. i must say that i love walking in the rain anywhere. in the countryside in small towns in the big city even Beijing. it is just the freshness of the air that i love. it really make you appreciate where you are. even in beijing it cools off and takes away the smell that you n0 longer smell. you just feel the freshness. OH wait i remember. we went to Fragrant hill. Cassie and i went up on this ski lift thingy and it was amazing i could see things but taking pictures doesn't do it justice because of all the low hanging clouds. I don't think it was smog this time.
on wednesday we had our last class FINALLY. they were informative but boring. we had the afternoon free so some of us went to the silk market it was fun to barter with people.
Thursday we left Beijing on the night train and slept all the way to Xian.
we hit the ground running that morning and saw too many things to remember. but it was amazing i will have to bring my journal to tell you all i have done in the last couple of days but i did see the terracotta warriors and that really makes you think and we bicycled the wall of Xian today that is 8.79 miles long we did it in about an hour it was a very uneven ride and the first bit i could have sworn that i was getting shaken baby syndrome.
i am running out of time so i will try and post again soon. love you all.

BATHROOMS

So this is mainly for my family who will think this is funny if it insults you in anyway i am sorry but my family will understand my humor.
My take on Chinese bathrooms or any bathroom related topics.
#1. the slits in Chinese babies pants. I know you have all hear of it before but to see it is completely different. you will be walking down the street and you will see a toddler with a stream of water coming from his bottom and it is totally normal. another thing which is more interesting is the 7 year old who just dropped his pants and started peeing. i just looked out my window on the bus and there he was wanting the whole world to see. you really have to watch for the peeing babies or you will step in their pee and you will need to change your shoes some of those babies have a huge bladder.
#2. The lack of toilet paper ANYWHERE!!! i understand the lack of toilets (though every once in awhile you will find one) but there is no Toilet paper. they expect everyone who needs to pee will have their own and therefore there is no need to have some in the stalls. i started carrying a whole role where ever i go. but when i forget it is really annoying and really gross. The dorm at Capitol Normal didn't even have any.
#3. When you do find TP or when everyone brings their own, you don't flush the toilet paper you throw it in the garbage. Not exactly what i want to see someone else's crap in the garbage. ewwwwww. if you do flush toilet paper it plugs very easily. The poor maids at the university would have to unplug everyday.
#4. The smell of the public toilets. well as you can imagine from the description atop YUCK!!!
#5. off the topics of toilets. The lack of walls in the shower. one would imagine that there would be something to stop the flow of water from getting all over the bathroom floor. But there is not, well at least not at our dorm we are now in a 4 star hotel that has a nice bathroom and almost comfortable beds but at the dorm we had a little problem with water getting everywhere. with no ledge to stop the water from getting all over the floor and the shower head having a leak my roommates accused me of doing the Canadian rain dance because the whole bathroom would be totally soaked. Erin was accused of plugging the toilet i was blamed for the water everywhere though it wasn't totally me.
#6. back to toilets. the public ones are nasty like i said above but i would like to elaborate. if you find the toilets the Chinese don't know how to use them. there is always pee on the seats yuck.
#7. according to one guy on my trip there is going to be an out break of the black plague in China soon. today there was crap all over the floor and there were no doors on the squaty pottys. interesting.
#8. the lack of soap in the public restrooms. you would think that with the risk of black plague so high that there would be soap everywhere to slowdown the inevitability. but no. most places you find will either be completely out or none to begin with. kinda worry some if you ask me.
This is what i have found so far but i am sure that there will be more and i may elaborate during different points of my trip.

PICTURES

I have pictures up i couldn't put them all up as my battery in my camera died so i only have 176 i will try and get some more up in the next couple of days. i hope this wets the whistle for the rest of my trip. check them out at photos.oc.edu

Finally getting a chance to write

So I have been in Beijing for just over a week and wow!!! It feels like we have been here a month. This place is amazing and beautiful in a weird way. It is full of people, very kind people who are always trying to help. For example 6 of us went to supper the other night and we don't speak Mandarin and the people working there don't speak English, this is my life here it is a game of charades, we were trying to understand what was on the menu and they were trying to help us they go out to the other costumers to find someone to speak to us and a lady named Juliet came and helped. we ended up with an amazing meal yummy. i have decided that i love Chinese food. So far i have climbed the Great Wall, i am still feeling it, I have seen temples and palaces they are all so beautiful but they all look the same. i will have pictures when i get back but don't ask what they are to cause i will not know. hhaha. i don't even really know how to describe this place except it has a smell of Bourbon street in New Orleans. I love it here and i can't imagine leaving.
The other day i had a one of the guys on my trip really make my day. . . we were on the back side of the temple of heaven and we saw these ladies ribbon dancing, with the really wide ribbons, he said that he would dance if only he had a ribbon. i dared him and he told me that if i could find a ribbon and buy it for him he would dance. i found the ribbon and bought it so he held up his end of the dare and danced with the ladies. it was amazing cause i couldn't stop laughing. later told me that he was really embarrassed with doing it but he did it anyway.
all the places we go i really find that the back side of the palaces or temples are the most beautiful. they have this air to them that make it special. either it is not as well done up as the front or there are people there playing cards of dancing or playing music. these are the special places that i hope to always remember because it really shows the people and the carefree life they have. it is amazing. there is one place that is really cool it is on the back side of the summer palace, it has this walkway that goes down to a kinda shopping area that is a tourist trap yes but it has this mote thing there and it was a overcast day so the reflections were amazing it was just beautiful.
on friday we went to the zoo that was fun i was left b myself for awhile because of the stupid tour guide asking me stupid questions but i will not get into my strong dislike for tour guides. but anyway i got to go around the zoo myself for an hour and it was a nice walk even though i was one of the attractions. i was looked at and people took pictures of me it was weird but whatever. it was nice to be alone in a city of 18million. that night we ate Peking duck it's pretty good what is amazing is what comes with it. there were 10 of us at a table and we could not eat all the food. these people really know how to fill americans up. so much good food i think i will gain 20 pounds before i leave China let alone the rest of my trip.
yesterday we went to the three self church and a house church that was cool though i was really tired and fell asleep a couple of times. we ate with the people and it was good too again a lot of food. then most of us crashed in an apartment for the afternoon most in the living room on top of each other. last night we went to the Chinese acrobatics show WOW it is amazing i swear those people were the gymnasts in the Olympics.
about the olympics i went to see wheelchair basketball it was germany against great britian. GB
won. then we saw some of the team in Mcdonalds after so we got our tickets signed it was pretty cool. the water cube is really amazing. it is textured and it changes colour. i will try and get pictures up soon. the birds nest is cool too. honestly during the olympics i wasn't too impressed with it but seeing it up close it is really cool.
i have ridden the subway the bus a taxi and it is amazing but i have decided that i will never drive here it is crazy traffic and only half the cars are allowed to drive each day until the olympics are over it is crazy traffic and i am amazed i haven't seen an accident thought there have been close calls. really close calls. i had better get off now but i hope all is well. love you all andrea

Leaving

So right now I am sitting in IT waiting for my I touch to sync with my computer after I was unable to open windows for week. The colour of the print is roughly the colour of my Pac Rim t-shirt that I am wearing right now. I decided that this would be the perfect time to reflect on my trip!!! I am leaving TOMORROW!!! It seems so soon and suddenly it hits me that maybe I am not ready to leave. Don't get me wrong I am so excited but at the same time I have my apprehensions because of all the things I am going to miss this semester. I will miss my friends and my family, and I feel overwhelmed. At the same time I am so excited because I am getting to know new people and discovering that I am going to have an awesome time getting to know these people. I am traveling around the world being as far away from home as humanly possible (well at least on Earth), with 25 other people most of whom I didn't know existed 8 months before. I am going to get to know more of God's creation than any other member of my family. WOW!!! I know that this semester I am going to grow mentally and spiritually and I am going to get to grow with other people and see where they are growing. I am hoping that with God's help and the help of the other people that I will be able to show His light to others who do not know Him, and even to those who do but maybe are a little down. In chapel today the speaker was talking about how each one of us is going to be someone that is needed for someone else. (ok so I don't say it quite as gracefully as the speaker did but it was a very good point). This kind of makes me wonder what God has planned for me and whose life I am going to be affecting. This makes me happy but scared because I want to be the best influence that I can to others and maybe that means that I have to step outside of my comfort zone and become more than I know I am capable of being. Maybe it will be one of my host families, I am going to have one in China, Japan and New Zealand, or maybe it will just be one of the members of my team. There are so many unknowns that scare me but this semester I am going on the most incredible ride that I just need to have faith that God will guide me where I need to be. There is so much that I need to do today but I know that it will not be done but it is okay, it is not all that important to get done well I really do have to do one thing but it will not take long so I am not too worried. Sorry for the rambling but this is what came to my head in no logical order. I know that this will be an amazing trip and I am anxious to get going. If you want to stay on my journey with me I will try and update often.

Procrastination

Today was suppose to be my day of buckling down and at least getting a couple of pages done on one paper… well today was a day of being on the internet getting a lot of emails and deciding what exactly to write about. Not that I didn't do that before; but now I think I have got it pegged down to a good thesis. And well ya this is my excuse for writing one paragraph, and still being the ultimate procrastinator. As of today I have 9 days till my paper is due, and for a procrastinator such as me it is amazing that I actually have gotten a thesis written. I always have good intentions of starting early and getting it done way ahead of schedule, so I can have a nice leisurely time of editing, I know I need to do a lot of editing. HAHA!!! But alas, I will do what I always so and that is wait till the last moment to start. I will be in a panic, that I will not get done and complain that there is no time to get it done, even though I have had enough time to write this paper 8 times over. So, I will be the procrastinator that I am and hopefully I will be done in plenty of time that I will not dream about the fact that I am not going to get it done. Someday I truly hope that this procrastination thing will get out of my system, so that I can be a regular person who sees a project and can get it done. Maybe I will become a person whose brain can actually function before then few left preceding days before the due date. Wish me luck on that!!! But, all of this when it is all said and done, will end up in me being in amazing places doing, amazing things so having a due date just tells me how close I am actually getting to my trip and my goals of more travel.

52 Days and Counting!!!

So, last November I was accepted for a Study Abroad semester, called Pac Rim. Since then I have been trying not to get too excited and get my homework done, though some days while I was suppose to be studying I spent all day thinking about my upcoming semester. Now that I am 52 days away this homework stuff is getting harder to concentrate on. I have a paper due on Thursday and then 2 more papers a timeline and some Japanese language stuff to learn, before I leave. Oh, I guess I should tell you where I am going... China, Japan, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, and Hawaii. YES!!! all those places in 3 months. I am so excited that I can't handle it any more. School work will get done and I will have an amazing semester. I get to go climb the Great Wall of China, see the Forbidden City, the Terracotta warriors, bungee jump, climb Mount Fuji, see where Lord or the Rings was filmed, Black water raft, surf, see the Great Barrier Reef, I am considering or more likely am going to skydive and so much more. This is going to be a semester of learning through actions not books. I will experience history. I will see what the Monglie army looked at when invading China; Gaze upon the worriers that are to protect China, see where the Massacre of Tiananmen square took place, that will be a sad day. I will see what I never would have thought imaginable 2 years ago. Now 52 days away and I am not wanting to work, or do school work ,just get ready for the trip of a lifetime. I know that if I didn't have something to do right now, than I would probably be driving everyone around me nuts and not wanting me around. So yes, even if I don't want to do what I have to do, I suppose there is a reason for it. So if you want to hear more about my travels you are more than welcome to keep on reading. I am a terrible Blogger but I will do my best to keep it updated so you all will share in my experiences, and find out where you will want to go next.