Preboarding

I'm at the airport now. Julie and I spent time together outside
security waiting for Carry to show up.

The United Airlines lady said I better make up for it big time for
saying Julie was "Just helping me with my luggage.". ;).

Oddly, Christian was going through security at the same time as us.
We all got patted down by the same TSA agent. W00t.

Ok we have another 50 minutes to boarding. I'm feeling a little under
the weather. Let's hope it doesn't manifest into anything remotely
resembling a cold.

Next stop: L.A.

11th Hour

Ok so I'm pretty much packed... I have a few errands to run tomorrow and then it's off to the airport.

Tonight the power went out in my apartment. Just my apartment and the two apartments above me. It's not like I had laundry or anything else important to do with electricity tonight... *sigh*.

Julie and I had been at the store getting some tape so I could secure a gift for my nihon no sensei. We were gone less than 20 minutes only to come home to a powerless apartment. WTF? My neighbors still had power, and it wasn't my breaker.

So I called the maintenance guy and he said he'd come check out the outside breaker.

While Julie and I waited for him to arrive we ate Baskin Robbin's with my car's hatchback up. :) It was good times.

It turns out that the outside breaker for half of the building popped... twice actually. Once after the maintenance guy left, but luckily (or maybe not so luckily?) the breakers are all exposed and don't require any sort of super powers to flip, so I just did it myself the second time.

We finally got some laundry done and I have my suitcase and 3/4 of my backpack ready to go. :)

More from Japan if my luck holds out.

- Terry

48 Hour Update

48 hours to go and I still have way too much stuff to accomplish before my trip.

I spent a good 40 minutes on the phone with Delta. My leg from L.A. to Salt Lake on July 4th was cancelled and there weren't any other flights on any other airlines that could get me home, so I have to spend the night in L.A. Hopefully I can readjust my sleep schedule and manage to catch my flight home on the 5th.

Also, Let's hope that North Korea doesn't decide to blow me up while I'm on my layover in Seoul this weekend: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/05/28/north.korea.alert/index.html

Hopefully things get smoother from here on out. :)

Trip Peparation

In 4 days I leave for my first international trip (because we don't count Canada aka Northern Montana). I'm heading to Japan where I'll be immersed in an intensive language course at Shitennoji University in Osaka.

We were notified today that we can expect "up to two hours or more while deplaning due to an onboard health screening" for H1N1 (Swine Flu). Ugh... And as if that wasn't enough, we're being "quarantined" (for lack of a better term) away from the school campus for the first week where we'll be taught in some off-campus building, although we'll still be living in the dorms. They say it's "for your protection". Right. The professor in charge says "After the first week I suppose we'll move to the main campus for instruction." and I sincerely hope that he's just being Japanese (they like to be vague) and that he's not really insinuating that we'll actually be off-campus the entire trip.

It's bad enough that they waited until now to tell us, but they've been extremely disorganized from day 1. I'm not impressed. ;)

At any rate, for those that care about the trip specifics:

I'll be leaving the U.S. on May 30th (Arriving in Japan on June 1st). The instruction is 5 weeks long, and will provide me with the next 2 classes (2nd year) of Japanese credit at the University of Utah (Japanese 2010/2020).

We'll be in class from 9:00AM to 12:30PM Monday through Friday. The rest of our time is "our own", but I have a feeling that I'll be studying a *lot* more than I do in the states.

To say that I'll be drinking from a firehose is an understatement. In Japanese 1010/1020 for Fall/Spring semesters I spent about 45 hours per semester in Japanese class. That's 90 hours total across 28 weeks. In Japan I'll do about 87.5 hours in 5 weeks. Yikes... and in case you hadn't heard, the Japanese tend to be a lot more serious about their studies. *gulp*

Wish me luck.