only four months and 29 days to go! not that i'm counting or anything! :D

i'm completely over this school thing. sometimes, i just feel like i'm ready to throw in the towel, and just call it a day, but at the same time, i want it to be finished, with me being given a TER out the other side. my english teacher briefly mentioned how we'll be rid of yr 12 in only 84 days today, and i actually felt a little deliriously happy, thinking about how soon it is until i won't have to do work for ages! i'm really looking forward to just spending time with people, and then going to japan.

I can't wait to just talk to the japanese, watch my language skills improve, go skiing a lot, and go to school, where i'll hopefully start a small riot with my gorgeous locks! haha but seriously, almost more than anything else in the world, i can't wait to go to my first day of school; it'll be so great to be at a Japanese school for a year! imagine how good my jap will be, even after a month! haha it'll be brilliant!

in a week and a bit (AFTER TRIAL EXAMS!! WOOOT!) i've got a rotary outbound district briefing day, which should be pretty good, methinks. i'm looking forward to meeting other people going through the same waiting process as i am; it'll be good to have someone to relate to, even if they are going to somewhere in Europe.

anyway, only approximately 149 days to go until i'm gone. omg i just realised i missed it skip over from 150 to 149! that's like a big milestone! haha i really want to see it go from 100 to 99, that'll feel so good!! ahh it's coming; not to much more to wait now.

i love it when it comes to the late teens and early 20s of each month, where i can say once more, "only x months until i go! soon it'll be four months, which isn't long at all; that's only a third of a year! wow!

anyway,

bed time now.

night!

my new addiction…

ok, so nothing new is happening rotary-wise, but i've found that i've become absolutely addicted to finding people who are going to Japan in the next few weeks. And once i've found them, i google them to try and find a blog, because over and over, i want to read what their first experiences are like, more than anything else in the world! i just can't wait to do that first post of mine with a title like: "hello from Japan!!" or something like that, it'd just be brilliant.

so, i've already added like 4 people on facebook who are going to the same district as me from the US, and they leave in a few days, which is so annoying, because i've still got 156 days to go! but pretty soon, i'll be down to 5 months to go; only about 5 days away, i think! ahhh! it keeps on coming!

school-wise; umm… i did pretty well in a physics test today, i think i probably got around 75%+, which is great for physics; hopefully my percentage goes up! we also got our yr 12 jumpers today, which is brilliant! the photo to the right is what it looks like; but i ordered mine one size too big! i was gonna get a medium, but then the sleeves were a bit short on the tester, so i got a large instead, but there weren't any to try, so i blindly went with it anyway. that was my undoing. it looks like i've put on about 5

0+ kg on my stomach; I look huge! haha oh well, fits me in the arms atleast! :D

that photo, btw, was my 6th try! :D haha

now, how about starting some work… ? hmm, maybe…:D

oh, and i also got some nike airs over the weekend, they look so cool!! (see photo)

august update. less than 6 months to go!!

This is the kind of post that i am looking forward to so much.

http://brooketofinland.blogspot.com/2009/08/first-days-in-lahti.html

you're gonna have to read it, it's from a girl who went from America somewhere to Finland, and having just been to a language camp for a week, she's now home with her host family, and about to start school tomorrow. you have no idea how much i am looking to doing an equivalent post of my own, it's just so exciting!!

ok, rotary news: almost nothing. I got a bulky letter from Terra Australis, the travel agency that organises us all for exchange. the major piece of documentation was a Visa application for Japan. it doesn't look very complicated or long; i've heard of some people's visa applications taking forever to fill out! but this one's only a page long, but it only gives me a tiny bit of space to list all the times that i have been to Japan before, which is four times, all for about 2 to 2.5 weeks long. so that's gonna be fun to try and squeeze onto there.

I also got an email (which gmail thought was spam! haha) from someone at rotary who is organising the first district briefing weekend at nunyara, in belair, on sunday the 5th of september. if rotary people are reading this, could you please send me a message, telling me what these orientation days are like? i've got no idea what's actually going to be happening, other than getting fitted for my rugby top and rotary blazer.

In some fairly unrelated news, i've decided to start making a playlist of songs to listen to on the plane to japan. Currently, i have all 6 of songs, or 25 odd minutes of music. i'm aiming to have several hours of music on there by the time i'll leave, and i plan on listening to it on the plane over there, on my iPod.

Ok, having just talked about it, i've put some more songs on there, so now i've got 11 songs, and about 45 minutes of music on there. 45 minutes into the flight, i could be having my first drink of coke or something… it's weird to think that in 162 days, 16 hours, 20 minutes and 5 seconds (as of now) i'll be on the plane, waiting to arrive in my new country for a year. exciting, but slightly scary.

just added some more (mainly Air and U2) and now i'm up to 17 songs, and just over an hour and a quarter of music! ALKJLSDJFLSKDJFLKJ i'm so excited to go!!

Also, two days ago, on monday, i turned 17 and a half. in 6 months, i will have finished school, got my TER, accepted a uni course (i would hope so, the TER i need is only 66.05!!) xmas, and then leaving for japan on the 23 of january. then about 3 weeks after i get there, i'll have my 18th birthday. All that in 6 months!! crap! that's a big six months, hey?

Anyway, i've got adelaide uni open day this sunday, which should be really quite good. i really want to see the international studies talk, and seeing some of the groups, i think these things, among others will be the best part of the day. i never realised before, but there's so much uni advertising around atm. obviously, it would be here every year, but i've never noticed it before. it's weird to think that i'll be finally finishing my schooling in 97 days… i've spent so much time here, and to suddenly have it finish is weird. to me, university is something that's always perpetually in front of me, like a carrot in front of a horse, held up on a fishing rod. like, uni will always be ahead of me, even though i could be going to uni in a little over 6 months if i wanted to…

wow…

and btw, it's crap that i have to wait this long to go, some people in america are already there!! i want to be there now! :D

this is a really long post, and i've got most of a physics assignment to do, so i'll post more later.

cheers!

My rotary life this fortnight

Ok, so new rotary news?

well, last week, i went to my rotary club for a standard meeting, at the Marion Hotel. it was ok, and fairly interesting, but it was surprising to see how many people didn't turn up.

the meeting's focus was on youth exchange, and I met the local MP for the area, Kris Hanna, who was an honorary member of the club. He was incredibly nice, and fascinating to talk to, especially about political subjects. i found out that he went to Cape Town about 30 years ago, during Apartheid, and that he found it so difficult to get along with his white host families, that it was easier to talk to the black maids, cooks and assistants! Most of the evening was spent hearing about Yasuyo (a girl here at flinders on a scholarship provided by rotary) talking about a recent trip to indonesia.

but, i found myself thinking, after seeing the two girls from NZ on a short term youth exchange, living with two rotarians that live quite close to me, if this was what i wanted to be doing?they're really nice as host parents, but these girls just became so disinterested. I hope that i don't turn into them. I want to be able to use this experience to the full, i don't want to spend it watching movies, shopping and eating junk food with another australian, like they were.

Also, the other day, i realised that it was only 6 months until i leave!! i'm so excited, most about the school, i think. i reckon that will be the best part, by far. But going to a rotary meeting will be very interesting as well, just to see the differences between the two cultures, and how that affects the meetings. Marion's meetings were quite informal, but they still had the basis of "… as i have the floor" and requesting to speak, and things like that. My Japanese teacher, who was a rotary exchange student also, told me that most meetings for Rotary happen during lunch in Japan, so that would be fairly odd, i think! :D

people are reading my blog!!

omg i just checked tehn, and 5 people from the USA and 3 from australia have viewed my blog! i'm assuming it's people that know Ben Mau from Michigan, who's blog i'm reading, because he's going to germany in a month, and the people in australia are rotarians checking up on me. :D

it's weird thinking that other people are reading this - enjoyable really… thinking that people are taking time to read my thoughts about school and life and japan.

anway, back to work…

thoughts…

i'm listening to an album by Air, called Talkie Walkie, and the third track is so incredibly eeriely interestingly rewarding to listen to. and because one of the songs on this album was featured in lost in translation, a movie in japan, this album always has a sense of being part of japan, even though it was written by a French duo.

so i'm listening to this song, as i'm doing now, and it just feels as though, i'll be on the plane, just listening to my iPod, 5 hours into the flight. it'll be darkish on the plane, i'll be in an isle seat on the left side of the centre row of seats on the plane, and i'll just be sitting there, waiting to get there, thinking about finally going to spend a year in the country that i've wanted to live in for my entire life.

i can picture myself doing that, but i don't know what i'll be thinking about. i've got a feeling it'll be a feeling of melancholic happiness; delight that i've succeded in my biggest goal so far, but sad at the same time that i'll be away from my family and friends for a whole year, alone in this new place, away from everything i know and understand.

and i've been feeling that for the last year, everytime i hear that one song, Run. it was also on an ep of Veronica Mars, which helped cement my love for it! :D

i was thinking the other day, doing some japanese, that i'm not particularly good at it. what i'm writing might be original and interesting, but i've got a real issue in my grammar and sentence structure retention. how the fuck am i supposed to communicate for a year in a language i'm only just starting to grasp? it's going to be so complicated, i can tell that i'm just going to be there sometimes, and i'll just be so sick of trying to communicate as best as i can, and still not getting anywhere. but it'll pay off - i'm supposed to come home fluent - but it'll be difficult, i just know it will…

i'm half way through my winter holidays. got back from Mooloolaba yesterday evening, the weather in adelaide is pretty cold, especially since in our hotel room, which wasn't that heated, i was sleeping with just a sheet, and then a light blanket half way through the night. because i haven't seen that side of the family much recently, it was great to meet them all again, and being able to talk to them like an adult, and do adult things with each other, rather than me as a little kid. it was good.

anyway, back now to reality, doing not enough work for the rest of the holidays, and eventually regretting it later.

oh, btw, i'm going to be seeing harry potter 6 with a friend the day it comes out, which is really exciting! i really can't wait, i've never seen a movie like this before. i think i'll see Brüno with another friend this week too, should be good. :D

bye!

just keeping on going…

ok, so it's been almost a month since my last post, because absolutely nothing has happened regarding my exchange. although, there was a big 3 paragraph "this is ben, we've sponsored him" article in the bulletin for the marion club. i was reading it thinking, "god, i sound so good on paper!" :D if only… haha

less than two weeks to go until holidays. i'm looking forward to it so much, i seriously can't wait!! :D school's stepping up atm, english isn't going too well. japanese, music and geog are going great, but english, and to a lesser extent

physics are not. lsadjflsakdjflaskdjf *sighs*

but i'm turning over a new leaf, not wasting time, and doing considerably more work… hopefully…

i've got mum to change my facebook pw, so that i can't log in during the week. i am having slight withdrawal symptoms, and it's only been 24 hours, but it's probably for the best!

also, i found a facebook group about people going to japan next year on rotary exchange, where i found a guy from Norway going to the same district as me. i added him as a friend, so it'll be interesting to see how he goes…

btw, i got a new scarf today, i love it! :D that's the picture with me, the scarf and the goob this afternoon, haha good times… mum reckon's i look like seb in this photo, but i can't see it…

oh, and i'm going to the dinner for the change over at my rotary club next friday with dad, should be good … hopefully! :D