Wow! Okay, so I intended on having a blog, but I thought it would be too much work since I'm already planning to do a vlog type of thing....but alas, I have to type out every little itty bitty detail of what's going on just because I feel like I would be sad if I forgot even the slightest thing.
September 10, 2013
The bittersweet day finally came, but I still didn't feel as if I would be away from home for nine months. The longest I had ever been away from my family was for three month periods while I studied in Oregon, so I had no idea what to expect. Also, I would be living with another family for nine months, not just a dorm! That's A LOT to sink in, which is why it didn't until pretty much yesterday.
Anyway, but to September 10th, I started the day off by waking up at 6:30am and sat outside of my house. While the valley became illuminated by the slow sunrise, I thought about how that's the last sunrise in Hawaii I would see in a while. Later that morning, I went to visit my grandmother one last time with Gavin and she repeatedly told me how she would miss me so much. Ahh, why do "goodbyes" have to be so hard!?
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| Do you see Grandpa? |
Before I left I also had to cut my eggplant baby, that everyone takes care of except for me...yay!
I left my house at about 9:45 to catch my 12:40 flight on Delta. After a loooooong goodbye with my parents and Gavin, Aunty Lorraine escorted me to my gate. I was sad, but I knew that they'd be waiting back at home for me, as usual, and that they would give me their love and support from across the Pacific. The smell of the pikaki flowers from the lei Gavin gave me eased my anxiety of getting on the airplane.
When I got to the gate, Reynold and Ryan were already waiting outside. Reynold and I were seated next to each other on the plane, and next to Reynold was a really nice man from Takarazuka who travels the world. His main hobby is traveling, he has been to all 50 states! He was very talkative, so he told us a lot about the area that we would be living in, he gave us his number and email address, so hopefully we can keep in touch! He helped Reynold and I navigate through immigration and baggage claim, so I gave him my lei as a token of my appreciation.
We waited for Ryan at baggage claim, but he was the last one to get there...luckily I had already removed his bag from the carousel. We were then greeted by Aoki-san and after a quick trip to the convenient store in the airport, we were whisked off on a limousine bus to Sannomiya. After arriving at Sannomiya, we had to find the shuttle that would take us to the Okura hotel. Unfortunately, we arrived so late that there were no Konan students to escort us! Luckily, Reynold is good at finding old people that know what they are doing, so a nice lady escorted us to the place. After arriving at the hotel, we were greeted by more Konan employees and got our room keys. When I got to my room, I found one of my roommates, Tanya, already taking a nap! I sighed with relief when I figured out that she wasn't a scary weirdo...haha. We went on an adventure to find her some food! We eventually ended up at a coffee shop, along the way I found out a lot about her, like she's from Latvia, but she's Russian, and she goes to the University of Leeds in England. When we got back to the hotel, I met and mingled with some of the participants of the program, who were all ridiculously nice...and normal (thank god)! Our other roommate arrived shortly after that, her name is Christine but she prefers to be called Tini, and she is from Germany. We went to bed early that night, only to realize that the beds were rock solid...boo.
