counting down

I haven’t updated in awhile. I wish my entries were less girlish ranting and more ~mature~ blogging. YES! I will be a more serious blogger from now on!

Yesssss….

The past week was my last week of work. I have been released from cubicle confinement. And it feels so good. We had a small company beach party on Wednesday and I got my jeans soaked and plastered with wet sand. I was in charge of blowing up all the balloons, catching the attention of all the rich Winnetka kids. They would either ask “Are you selling balloons?” or simply yoink one off the ground while I wasn’t looking.

On Thursday and Friday I took the train to Chicago to get my visa. Originally I thought the whole process would be complicated, since waiting for my CoE was a nervous three month anticipation. But receiving my visa was just a slip and exchange of documents under the ticket window at the consulate. Then come next afternoon and じゃじゃーん！ Student visa, no problem!

The Japanese Consulate is at Water Tower Place so I spent two wonderful sunny days enjoying the weather. I mean, despite it being utterly infested with tourists and suffering two days being sardined with sweaty Cubs fans on the red line, it was overall very pleasant!

I spent Thursday having lunch with my mom and later met up with Ivy. We went to the MCA and she needed her Chicago fix, so we went to Potbelly’s. I’m so glad I saw her. She’ll be spending the fall semester in Paris. We said our goodbyes on Friday.

The next week will more or less be easy. I have all the technical stuff done, but now I have to tackle things like packing and seeing people before I leave. I want to go to Six Flags sometime too. Am I feeling excited? If I mention to anyone that I’m going abroad to Tokyo, they always ask me the same question. Yesssss of course I am excited! I’ve felt stress for so long (applying, waiting, acceptance, waiting, more documents, more waiting) that I have yet to feel truly ecstatic.

But with a week to go, I’m sure it’ll hit me that I’ll be in Japan for a year.