Pre-Departure Rant

Well, there is officially five more days of life here in glorious America. So far, the freak-out-melt-down-time has been at a rather low occurrence, but I'm guessing that come Thursday, I'll be riding the Loopy Bus to Crazy Town.

Anyway, packing has been slowly coming along and things are starting to finally feel like its actually happening. I've been having my high moments of absolute optimism and then my lower moments of uncertainty and doubt, but those are becoming less and less frequent. It helps that I can use my final week here as quality time with each of my family members individually. Saturday was reserved for Alex and his family, to which I enjoyed a splendid meal of steak and other delicious cooking. Sunday, Brian and Meagan treated me out to my favorite restaurant, Osaka's, and we were able to talk about my trip. Tuesday is reserved for a movie with Dad and a possible trip to the bookstore. Wednesday is Kayla Time where we plan on staying in and catching up on some intense bouts of Mario Kart and other video games. Afterwards, I'm heading on down to Detroit to visit Roni and say my goodbyes to some of the BFC. Thursday and Friday, I'm making final touches on the suitcase extravaganza, final quality time with the family before my early wake up call on Saturday morning.

My flight leaves at 10 am from Detroit to Chicago. From Chicago, its an approximate 13 hour flight to Seoul, South Korea. From the Korean airport its another 2 1/2 hour flight to Fukuoka, Japan. Oh, but that's not all. From the airport in Japan, Steph and I are taking a bus to the University which is about another 2 hours. In other words, I'm planning on looking gorgeous when I make my entrance into the University.

I've been taking in a lot of silly cultural things lately, such as reading billboard signs and feeling comfortable walking in the mall by myself. I'm going to miss driving, and my cell phone, and being able to just flush a toilet normally without having to adjust the pressure of a bidet. I'm going to miss meat, and chicken, and probably even forks. But its okay, I know that I'll probably forget about half of these things when I'm over there, because I'll be struggling to read market signs and swallowing octopus dumplings down my throat.

So for now, I am going to just take one day at a time and enjoy the last few days with my family and friends, and work on my ever-growing fight with understanding Kanji (Japanese writing system).

Until I'm half-way across the world,
Michelle