japan, take two!

Hello!

So it's been a while, but like I said approximately 47 days ago, this blog is getting revived! Tomorrow afternoon I will be boarding a plane, ready to spend the next year of my life in Chiba, Japan, working as a Coordinator of International Relations for the JET Program.

For those of you that don't know, the Japan Exchange & Teaching (JET) Program is a program sponsored by the Japanese government in order to facilitate international exchange. There are two possible positions: ALT (Assistant Language Teacher), which for American JETs means teaching English, and CIR (Coordinator of International Relations), which is a lot more vague and official-sounding, and also a lot less uniform. What it means for me, working in Chiba City, is mostly translation and occasional interpretation, as well as possibly helping out with some exchange programs or English conversation classes once in a while. I'm a little nervous about my Japanese not being up to par (especially since I haven't really spoken it in months), but otherwise I'm looking forward to work!

I had my pre-departure orientation this afternoon, and that was when leaving for Japan for a year started to feel real. It's been a whirlwind summer, with just a week in between graduation and GHP and then just a few days between GHP and now, so I haven't really had a chance to process the fact that I'm actually going abroad for a significant length of time until now. I had also missed the Q&A session they'd held earlier because I was at GHP so I didn't get to meet anybody else leaving from Atlanta, but I did get to tonight! There are 38 of us leaving from Atlanta, of which I am the only CIR, and we'll all be on the same flight tomorrow (so I'm sure I'll get to know them even better by the time we land).

So I'm still not done packing (even though I leave in about 15 hours), but I guess this isn't really surprising. It was worth spending the day seeing people and at orientation instead of packing, so no regrets there - if I don't sleep much tonight it'll probably help with jet-lag anyway. But I probably should get to it, despite the party happening at my house that's at least ostensibly in my name,  so I'll end this here.

I should have internet at the hotel during Tokyo Orientation, so if I have time hopefully my next post will be from there! Until then. :)