News of the day/year/life!

It finally came.....

My Guarantee Form!!!!!

So I recieved my guarantee form last week and here's what I learned:

My City: Maebashi City, Gunma Prefecture, Japan
My Host Club: Maebashi West
My Host School: Kyoai Gakuen
Airport I'm flying into: Narita Airport, Tokyo


My host family is a family of four, a mom, a dad, and two host sisters. However one of those host sisters will be coming to my district in America on exchange.

I've taken the opportunity to email them, my district councelor, my district chairman, my school principal, and everyone else who put their email on my guarantee form. I also recieved my business cards today. Excitement!!!

Anyway, I have 35 days until I leave, my departure date is August 18th. That's 5 weeks away. FIVE WEEKS! I'm so excited! I can't wait! Anyway, I'll update with info as soon as I get it. Until next time. じゃまたね！

2nd Orientation and Albany Trip and 3rd orientation and District Conference and Fun Times and etc.

Hi guys! It's been a while!

Sorry for the wait! I've been busy/my computer crashed/I was so lazy. But here's an overall update from then to now. I'll hopefully update more regularly(I know i've heard that before...) now that my exchange is so much closer!
So let's start with the 2nd orientation. We had a second one....yeah....not much happened. lol. So it was at a pretty nice restaraunt. My dad dropped me off and I met up with some of my friends. We took the language test, it was pretty awful, since we had like no time to do it(xD), I think I did pretty well though. Then we divided up into groups and just talked about preparing for our countries. Packing, setting goals, culture shock, etc.

Now for the fun part....Albany! If you didn't know, albany is the state capital of NY(not NYC.) So we left on Thursday for Bainbridge. I got a ride up with my local rotary club. We got there and spent the night at a host family in Bainbridge. Mine was very nice, and they fed us very well(too well xD.) I was staying with three other inbound exchange students, we had alot of fun on the trampoline, and the dog ate the frisbee.

The next day, we woke up around 6(Uggghh), and got ready. We ate breakfast and met up with the other students to ride to albany. I sat with one of the inbound Japanese exchange students, Hinako. We talked about alot of Japanese stuff until we got there. We then got out and went to the captial building. It was very big and very expensive. We walked up the million dollar staircase.

We then made our way to the Albany Mall, and had a BLAST! At least, until the police came and tried to kick us out. Appearantly, on Friday, those 18 and under have to be supervised. Fortunately the "We're exchange students." excuse worked, and we were fine. From there, we headed over to a Skating rink. I noticed the South American and European kids we're quite talented skaters, while the Asian kids and us Americans....not so much. Though there were a group of eight year olds who were skating circles around us.

Afterwards, we made our way back to the house and abruptly passed out. The next day, we headed over to the bainbridge city hall and began preparing for the talent show, while those of us who weren't in it, just hung out and played shiritori. And then, after saying our heartfelt goodbyes, made our way home.

No flash forward to our Third Orientation! It was in may, so April was completely uneventful, aside from a trip to my country contact's restaurant, which was Awesome! Yeah, so third orientation. Not much happened. We built a house out of pasta and marshmallows and went over the ambiguous rules of the program. Afterward we headed home and awaited District Conference!

So conference was increadable! It was an overnight, so we stayed at a college campus. I was roommates with my exchange student friend from Japan, Yodai. We had a blast just messing around, doing exchange stuff. I got to sing in a staircase with a Bolivian, an Indian, an Argentinian, and a fellow American, that was random and hilarious! And we had the talent show. It was Amazing! Everyone did so well! Here's a brief overview video of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3ftw-mWpAY&feature=player_embedded

After that, we made our way home from what was our last official rotary event. I began attending my local rotary club's meetings regularly. Every week, they do a presentation. They're so interesting! School Ended, I took my regent, I graduated, and then some cool stuff happened! Okay, so a nearby town happens to have a festival, where I just happened to run into my friends Axel and Shreya, Exchange students from Bolivia and India. And they were meeting up with Manone and Alice, from France and Belgium. We all hung out, played some Just Dance, and ran a 5K race that I somehow got roped into. Axel, Shreya, and I finished at practically the same time, just over 30 minutes. We had so much fun at the festival!

And then, a week later, It came time to say goodbye to Axel and Shreya(they're from my rotary club). We went to Dunkin' Donuts, and said our goodbyes. I'm definately visiting them in Bolivia and India someday!!!

And that's a pretty decent update up until now, other than my guarantee form, which I'll do in another post anyway guys. Thanks for reading!

Hi Guys!

Sorry for the late update i've been kind of busy(lazy) lately. Not much has happened. I had the second orientation, which i'll talk about soon, and next week I have the albany trip. Still no placement yet. >_< Hopefully soon.

New Camera!!!!

Speaks for itself. Update tommorow! :)

Post Numero Dos!

Hi Guys!
Sorry for lack of updates, no excuse other than laziness. :-P However, Updates are coming soon, I believe an introduction about myself + an overview of the Rotary Program thus far are in order, and hopefully you should expect them around mid-late March-ish. So sense I last posted I've recieved some emails, furthured my rotary homework(that right HOMEWORK, not as bad as it sounds though), and watched a movie....so not many excited things have happened....yet. My search for the one perfect blazer is still in pursuit, and my exact future location is still unknown, but bear with me, for it shall (hopefully) not be long before my questions are answered. I'll keep you guys posted!
Thanks for reading!
-David

First Post!

Hi guys!!!! My name is David. I'm a 17 year old high school senior. And I will be spending my 2012-2013 year attending high school in Japan.(Wooo!!!!) I'm unbelievably excited for it!!!!This blog will record my life, leading up to, during, and after the exchange.

 So first off, I'm able to do this exchange thanks to the Rotary International Youth Exchange Program. It began as an application, grew into an interview, transformed into a passport fair, mutated into a 16 page application, evolved into a bigger interview, and then became a gruesome month-long waiting period, but I got accepted to go to Japan.

So far I've attended one orientation. I still have 2 more plus some kind of convention I have to attend before I leave. So for now updates will be random and inconsistant. Leading up to the time of departure(which should be in early August) they will probably get more frequent, up until late october when I will probably(hopefully not) fall off the face of the earth for a little while.(Hopefully this means that I'll be having a blast in Japan, and don't have time to update. ^^')

So for now I'll begin to update about the whole process beginning from the application, up until the first orientation.

I'll do my best to keep you guys posted. Thanks for reading!
Bye! ^_^