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.