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So now I'm going to Japan. For a year.

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ender:
Do you still live there?

Quemaqua:
I am only several months too late to that reply. Sorry, ender.

Life has been nutso busy. My long spring break was fantastic. My girlfriend (now fiancee--more on that later) came to visit in late February, and then none other than our own Belmont came in March. Was a fantastic time, got to tool around a bunch and look at things, visit interesting places, take tons of pictures, and of course buy a lot of unnecessary bullshit, especially games. I'll try to round up some pictures and such maybe this weekend, if I can find the time. I've got everything in albums of course, but you know.

Then the second semester hit, and everything really went to shit. Apparently some of the leadership at my university decided they wanted to make the program more beneficial for THEIR students rather than those of us studying there, and this entailed a bunch of unpleasant changes to the program that made our lives a lot more difficult, and sadly I don't think benefited their students either. All told it was largely the same as the first semester, just with more bullshit, more stress, and less free time. It wasn't the end of the world, but it did make it a lot less enjoyable, and killed my desire to go out and do the stuff you're supposed to do as an exchange student: travel and meet people.

I talked to some of the faculty about it, and they remained good folks, but there was little they could do given that the orders came from on high. Nothing changed, but at least I made our collective dissatisfaction known, and everyone was able to communicate. In the end, I don't regret going, and I did have a great time, but there was a lot of BS that could have made it a thousand times better, and it really hindered my learning and practice at the end, unfortunately. My Japanese is not where I want it to be after a year in the country. Part of that was also the overabundance of American students, European students, and English-capable Asian students there at the time, and my age being substantially above that of the average college student.

But I'm not complaining. I had a great time, it was mostly covered by scholarships (mostly), and it was ultimately a great experience that I will never forget. And I came back with a whole lot of amazing books and games and comics and everything else.

I've been back home since mid-August, and immediately had to start dealing with stuff at home. I got a job at my home university's study abroad office, and am working on the first semester of my last year, which is super busy. I have almost no time to breathe. On the bright side, I didn't have any culture shock going to Japan, and I haven't had any returning home. Maybe all that meditation has really paid off.

It's good to be home, even though I desperately miss Japan in a lot of ways. But I also proposed to my girlfriend about a week and a half ago, and so all my plans are now very home-focused. I don't want to abandon my language studies, but I need to start thinking about getting work, and my Japanese didn't improve to the degree to which I wanted it to if I was going to use it professionally. It was a fairly major blow, but I'm shifting trajectories, so we'll see how it all pans out. Either way, I'm in a pretty good place despite being way more stressed out than I'd like, especially since I was way more stressed out from April to August than I wanted to be to begin with.

I'll try to post some more links to pictures later!

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