Excitified.

Somewhere between excited and terrified, that's where I stand emotionally right now. I wish there was a word to describe what I'm feeling...but hey, you never know, maybe there's one in Japanese!

I leave in 2 days to head to Japan! Crazy!! Oh wait, I need to fill people in on details.

So- I am going to Hakodate, which is in Hokkaido, which is in Japan, which is in Asia.  And I've never been to any of those places.  But, thanks to a Light Fellowship and getting accepted to HIF (Hokkaido International Foundation...but we'll cover that in a second!) I can go!

HIF is the name of the program I'm going to, although my first interaction with them went something like this:

 "We are sorry to inform you that you are placed on the waiting list. As for your waiting status, we will inform you after March 18."

That didn't sound to promising, but just wait until the bomb they dropped on March 18th-

"We have waiting lists A, B, C, and your name is placed on the list C.

When there are cancellations we will accepts applicants from the list C accordingly."

Those were crushing times. But I didn't lose hope (*I might have lost hope), and I stayed on the waiting list.  I then started frantically applying for all kinds of other summer activities, resigned to thinking that Japan would have to wait until another summer.  Suddenly, 2 days before all the paperwork was due to the light fellowship, I get a new message: Accepted! I was going to Japan! And I would stay with a host family! Ahhhhh! Excitement abounded.

About a week ago, I got confirmation of the conformation (see what I did there?) of my host family. I'll be staying with the Sasaki family, and best of all: in addidion to my host parents, I'm going to have 2 sisters! Kazune is 20 and is into cooking and volleyball, and Shinon who is 17 and also likes volleyball! My host parents also seem really cool; my host dad is a vice principal or something like that (I don't understand the Kanji at all) and his hobbies are cameras and guitars (cool!) and my host mom is into patchwork and mini-volleyball (I don't know what minivolleyball is but it sounds so cool)!

So life is very exciting.  But also terrifying. I definitely don't remember how to buy a train ticket, and it looks like I might be taking two trains every morning on my commute.  On the plus side though, the area I'm living looks beautiful!

Allrighty, time to go pack...but first I'm going to set up a quick tradition.  I just spontaneously decided that it would be really cool to play High, Low, Hero at the end of each of my posts, because I think its a really cool way to get a cross-section into a day.

High: Having dinner with my whole family (including one set of grandparents and my aunt!) It was delicious!

Low: Freaking out about my lack of japanese vocabulary and grammar...but I'm feeling better now :)

Hero: My best friend, Jon Russell, for helping me come up with this awesome name for a blog! Texan in Japan! or Tex A Ninja Pan! Ninjas are cool!