Leaving for Ikeda

Hi.

So. I have not posted in a while, in almost 2 months. I apologize for that, but I plan on being incredibly active and awesome with this blog throughout my exchange experience, which is actually going to start in approximately 8 hours, when I leave Burlington International Airport at 6:15 AM, for Chicago, and then at... 1 PM or so, I will be on a plan heading for Tokyo.

So. These past several weeks have been completely amazing. I CAN NOT believe how kind people have been, throwing me surprise parties that actually were not a surprise (one of them was though, omg. Thank you all), writing me cards, buying stuffed ducks, and unicorns, and peeps (the marshmallow birds), hello kitty coloring book, pencils, spending quality time AAAND giving me hugs all of which is like incredibly awesome of people to do. Oh, and giving me Edna, a gender neutral bouncy ball with two huge eyes that I actually can't find at the moment. Like WOW you guys! This is appreciated beyond belief. I mean, getting stuff is super awesome, but just the overall total random acts of kindness were extremely appreciated. EXTREMELY APPRECIATED. I feel so fortunate to have people in my life who are this wonderful. You all seem to really know how much this upcoming experience means to me.

SO I have been packing for a lot of today. I spent a very long time looking for Edna my bouncy ball, but shim seems to be gone. Hopefully shim can be mailed to me once shim is found, because I was going to have this awesome pattern in my photos where Edna would just be randomly in the background, or something like that. The photo of me to the left right here, is of Edna and I. Bony gave shim to me as a going away present!






I feel like this post won't be long enough. I want to write a ton of gushy gushiness and attempt to show just how appreciative I am. But I won't. Through my incredibly awkward personality I am/will/have been making this blog incredibly awk, so I won't add on to the awkwardness, too excessively. I also feel kind of emotionless right now. Oddly I am already over my sadness phase (for now), and I get these random super zingy spurts of excitement due to the fact that I am going to Japan BUUUT they usually only last for like 15 seconds, and then they go away, but come back again immediately. I am like a huge pot of super mixed feelings right now. I also literally have NOT slept, at all, for the past month except for this past Wednesday when I slept for 16 hours. I am starting to notice that besides giving me more time to do stuff, this lack of sleep isn't benefitting me much. Unfortunately. And I totally WOULD sleep right now but I kind of can't because I am way too excited because I am going to Japan.

Wooow. I do not know what to think. Actually, I think I am about to collapse cause my life has been insane these past few weeks. OOH OMG SOMETHING I SHOULD MENTION, my passport and visa were actually "lost", or more like given to the wrong mail-dude or w/e by YFU (my exchange program), and so that was insane hectic. There was a huge chance I would not have gone to Japan on time. Thankfully though, my dad being the awesome guy he is tracked down the passport and the passport arrived yesterday (Saturday). Wow. Another reason why I am such a fortunate person.

So. I think I am done writing for now. I will be leaving for a year in Japan super soon, and I need to do a little more preparation. Like, memorize Japanese vocab someone would use when laminating paper, or developing awesome photos of awesome people. This picture shown to the top left, is an act of amazing kindness that I will most definitely somehow manage to laminate in Japan. The picture shown to the left, is an example of an awesome picture of an awesome person (the girl) and so I must somehow develop the picture and show the picture to my host family.

The most amazing class I have ever taught :)

Time to go. Time to go to Japan!! (check facebook for all pictures. I've taken like 600 in the past two weeks. Facebook is also soooo waayyy more convenient.)

I can not believe this is actually happening.
-Oliver