Orientation (part I)

Well, today was our long orientation day. Mostly it was a lot of information that we'd already read about in the handbook (we're not allowed to stab anyone or smuggle narcotics into the country), but we also had a really cool panel on job opportunities in Japan. (The panel consisted of a guy from the state department, a professor, and a woman who works for the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission (I think that was the name of it).) We also got to do exceedingly awkward role plays about various situations we may run into while we're in Japan. My group's role play was about what to do if a member of the group becomes intoxicated and wants to leave the rest of the group. (The hilarious thing was that our group of three had two teetotalers in it.)

However, we STILL haven't gotten information on a lot of important things, like who the heck our host families are! So everyone's a bit worried about that. Hopefully we'll find out who we'll be staying with BEFORE we're supposed to actually meet them.

There are 14 people total in my program, 5 men and 9 women. (Almost all the participants are Caucasian; we have two African-American girls and two Asian girls, but no other Hispanics as far as I can tell.) 2 are working on Master's, 3 are Ph.D. students, and the other 9 either just graduated college or are still doing undergraduate work. I've been spending a lot of time talking to the graduate students, because they're doing fascinating research. (One is studying Japanese political structures, one is studying mandalas in the 12th and 13th centuries, and one is studying women's education in Taiwan during the Japanese occupation.) I had an awesome conversation during dinner about Buddhism and pop culture. (Yeah, okay, I'm a bit of an East Asian Religions nerd.) In any case, I'm learning a ton from people in the program, which is exceedingly cool.

Our check out time tomorrow is 3 a.m. (UGH), so I'm trying to decide whether I even want to try sleeping. I'm not sure I'll be ABLE to sleep, and I don't particularly want my alarm to wake up my roommate. (I have two roommates--one is coming to Kyoto with me, and the other is going to Ankara, Turkey, so she doesn't have to leave until 5 p.m. tomorrow, lucky duck.)

We're also not entirely sure when our language pledge goes into effect, so there are a group of us who are planning to start speaking Japanese when we get on the airplane. We'll see how that goes.

じゃ、練習のためにちょっと日本語でタイプしようと思います。他の奨学金の学生は私より日本語の話すのが上手ですから、ちょっと恥ずかしいです。でも、頑張ります。たぶんプログラムの終わりまでに日本語の話すのはそんなに苦手じゃありません。

In any case, I should go finish packing my things up. My next post will be from Japan!