Deana & Kat

Flight panic has abated somewhat. My chauffeurs for tomorrow's airport run, Deana and Kathryn are here to spend the night since we have to leave at 4:30. Deana wanted to see her name in print on the blog, so here it is! The picture is of Kat and Deana in Ireland last summer.

I am eternally grateful for their fine driving skills and their ability to get up early and their willingness to do both of the above!

Flight panic

Yes, I'll admit that flight panic sets in each time that I go on a trip. Am I afraid of flying? Not really. Flight panic involves fear of getting to the airport to find that:

a) I don't have my passport and/or ticket.

b) I'm not really booked on the flight I think I am (don't laugh--this actually happened once. The travel agent had booked me on the flight that left the previous day.)

c) The airport has changed location and I didn't know, so I can't find it (okay, this one is just silly, but don't think that doesn't mean it hasn't crossed my mind).

d) My flight is cancelled.

Of these, the one that is bothering me today is that my flight might be cancelled. There is a basis for this fear. My flight from Charlottesville to Washington, D.C. leaves at 6:35 a.m. and this flight has been cancelled for the past two days. I don't know why, but that's what the United website tells me. So I'm worried that I'll get up at 3:30, get to the airport at 5:30 to be told "Oops, sorry we're not doing that flight. Not enough passengers."

Of course, I know that if a flight is cancelled, I'll be rebooked onto another one, but I want things to go smoothly. I don't want to arrive in San Francisco after the orientation has started (or is over!). I don't want to wonder what will happen. I want to get to the airport, get on the plane, make my connection, arrive in SF in time for everything. I signed up for United's Easy Update so that they will call and email me if there is a delay or cancellation. I don't think that there is much else I can do except STOP WORRYING.

Nerves

I've packed all I can pack right now (still trying to rearrange things so that it will all fit) and I've done everything I can think of that I need to do and so now all that's left is to be nervous! I do this before every trip I take. I look forward to the trip for months and then in the last moments, I get very nervous about it. Part of it is the "great unknown" and part of it is leaving the comforts of home. It's normal for me and once I'm on my way, the nerves will calm down and I'll have a wonderful time.

So since I have this evening and all day tomorrow to deal with my anxiety level, I think that I need to focus more on the original reasons why I love to travel and why I wanted to go on this trip. I love to look at maps and this one shows all the "host cities" where teachers in our group will be staying. There are 200 teachers in all and we'll start out in Tokyo (which you can't see very well on this map--it's on the "elbow" of the country where there are 3 red dots close together). After about 5 days in Japan, groups of 20 will go to the various host cities. Mine is Aizuwakamatsu (I which I knew exactly how to pronounce it!). This is going to be such a great experience! Now that I've looked at the map again and taken a few minutes to think about the trip, I think that I'll go get my Japan travel book and read a little more about what I'm going to see!

Packing . . . stinks

I love to travel, but I hate to pack. And this trip is different from most trips I go on because I actually have to take "professional" clothes, like a suit and dress shoes. Usually, when I travel with students, I take sneakers and jeans and khakis and tee-shirts. But this time I'm taking pantyhose and blouses and dress pants. I'm kind of worried about everything getting wrinkled in the suitcase, but there's not much I can do about that. The hotels all have irons available, so I can press the clothes as needed.

But it really seems that I have less space in my suitcase than normal. I'm sure I'm taking more clothes than I really need and I'm not a good packer. You would think that I would have this packing deal down to a science, but, alas, no. Plus I have to take the gifts, slippers (because slippers provided in Japan for going into places are generally too small for big American feet--and I definitely have big American feet), wrapping paper, stuff, stuff, stuff.

I actually brought my giant suitcase down from the attic to see if it would be better. This is the suitcase that I took to Venezuela and I swore I'd never take it on a trip again. It's just so big. I put all my stuff in it, but it didn't make a huge difference and I don't like it as well, so it went back upstairs. I'll just squish everything flatter.

Gifts

On Monday when I received my final packet from JFMF, I was so excited to get information about my host family. While I'm in Aizuwakamatsu, I'll be spending one night in a Japanese home. My family consists of a mother and her 8-year-old daughter. The mother is a piano teacher and her interests are cooking, singing and driving. Driving? Anyway, the daughter's interests are singing and watching movies (at least that's what I think the form says--I know it says watching something, but I'm not sure if the word is "movies" or not).

The home stay is only one night, but it's probably one of the parts of the trip that I'm most nervous about. I don't know if they will speak any English at all and my Japanese is limited to "Do you understand English" and "I don't understand Japanese", plus a few other key phrases. I'm anxious about perhaps making a faux pas, but I'm trying to remember that they know that I'm an American and that they will probably be forgiving about any errors in protocol that I commit!

Gift giving is very big in Japan, so I'll be taking gifts to my host family. Since I teach high school and have no children myself, I was at a bit of a loss as to what to get for an 8-year old girl. I wanted the gifts for the adult to reflect the area where I live, but I doubt that a little girl really cares too much about that. I asked for advice and tried to follow it, so I got stickers, stickers and more stickers! I was also told that Disney characters are very popular in Japan, so I got a book of the alphabet with Cinderella (and it has stickers as well!). I also got a pack of mini markers, pencils from the Frontier Culture Museum and a glass bead necklace from the same museum. I read, however, that giving gifts in groups of 4 is considered back luck because the word for "four" (shi) and the word for "death" sound alike. So I guess I'll have to take out one of the pencils. I also got a "Cougar Cubs" tee-shirt from our elementary school. The shirt is maroon and has the school song on the back. My mom is going to try to get the sheet music for the song, since both the little girl and her mother are into music, they might like that. I have no idea what the school song for my high school is . I know that there used to be one, but no one ever, ever sings it anymore!

For both of them, I got some postcards of the mountains and Natural Bridge, a "Virginia is for Lovers" sticker and a bag of Hershey kisses. I've been told that Hershey chocolate isn't available in Japan and since we have a Hershey factory in Stuarts Draft, it seems appropriate.


For the mom, I got a book of photos of the Shenandoah Valley, some soap and lotion made here, a notepad and pen with the Blue Ridge Mountains, a little book of "old fashioned" songs (like Oh Susannah), and a butterfly copper and glass sculpture from Sunspots.

I hope that the stuff I got is enough/not too much and that it's appropriate. The way one gives and receives gifts in Japan is also very important. You can't just throw everything in a gift bag and hand it over. It needs to be wrapped very carefully and handed to the recipient with both hands. When opening a gift, you must be very careful of the wrapping and not rip into it. I don't want to wrap the gifts before I go because airport security could make me unwrap them (or do it themselves, which probably wouldn't be pretty). So I guess I'll have to take the paper, ribbon, tape and scissors and wrap them once I'm there. Then I'm not sure whether I should wrap each thing separately or whether it's okay to wrap several things together. I hope I don't embarrass myself!

Tags

So for most people, luggage tags and name tags aren't terribly exciting. But I have to admit it--I love this stuff. Luggage tags mean I'm going somewhere! And the name tag for JFMF has my name and state written in Japanese characters. I still haven't figured out the different Japanese characters. There are some just for writing foreign words, so I would assume that's what is used on the name tag. I really want to learn something about writing the language while I'm there.

I'm rich!

Whew! Graduation was last night, today was the last teacher workday, so now I can focus fully on the trip that's coming up in . . . 5 days. 5 days! Yikes. So much to do!

In theory, I could be ready to leave in an hour. I have pretty much everything that I need. But organizing and agonizing are two pre-trip activities at which I excel, so that's what I'll be doing for the next 5 days. Well, I just looked at the calendar and it's really 4 days. Did I already say "yikes"?

After school was over today, I went to get travelers' checks. I find it interesting that in Japan, we can't expect our credit cards to be accepted in most places and can't count on our debit cards to get money. Apparently, Japan is primarily a cash society. Credit cards may be accepted in larger stores in Tokyo, but "outside major cities, it is safe to assume that credit cards lose their power to produce money and turn into useless plastic cards"-- a quote from the JFMF handbook. On the past couple of trips that I've taken to Europe, it has been so convenient to get cash using a debit card and credit cards are accepted almost as much as in the U.S. (well, maybe not at McDonald's, but I think that's pushing it a bit, even here). So it's back to travelers' checks and changing money while on the trip. Fortunately, the hotel in Tokyo can change dollars into yen and the hotel in Aizu-Wakamatsu (the city where I'll be for a large part of the trip) is close to a bank which can exchange money.

In addtion to travelers' checks, I got some yen from my bank. Of course, you can't just walk into a bank and get yen. Forms must be filled out and it has to be ordered, but it only took a few days and now I'm rich! I have 21,000 yen! All that on a teacher's salary!

Okay, the truth must be told. 21,000 yen is about $210. So I'm not as rich as it might seem. But look at the Japanese money! Is it not beautiful? Money from other countries is so cool! I've always been bummed out by the fact that American money just has pictures of dead presidents and that it has a serious lack of color. Don't get me wrong--I have nothing against the dead presidents, but I'd love to see money with the Blue Ridge mountains or the Grand Canyon or Johnny Depp . . . okay, I got a little carried away there. I suppose that Pirates of the Caribbean doesn't really earn him a place on American currency, so strike that last part. But can you imagine how beautiful our money would be with colored pictures of amber waves of grain and purple mountains majesty?

Here's a closer look at the 1,000 and the 2,000 yen notes:

Waiting

So back in the fall, I finally decided that this was the year that I would apply. The application is fairly lengthy and requires an outline for a follow-on plan, but I completed it, mailed it in by the December 10 deadline and tried to put it out of my mind until the end of March when I would find out if I was accepted or not.

The end of March arrived. In the meantime, I had gone through a painful breakup with my boyfriend of more than 4 years and a couple of other really horrible things happened, so a trip to Japan seemed to be just the perfect answer to my desire to go somewhere very far away where I didn't know anyone. It would also be an excellent way for me to focus on something besides my problems. But the end of March passed and I still hadn't gotten a letter saying that I was in or out. I had thought that my chances were fairly good, but now I had to consider the possibility that maybe I wasn't going. Maybe it was fate once again stomping on my head (not that I really believe in that, but sometimes you just have to wonder...).

Finally, at the beginning of April I got my acceptance letter! I was thrilled! There were a lot of forms to be filled out and returned and plans to be made, but it was so exciting. I got in!

Why?

I am a high school French teacher in a small town in Virginia and I'm going to spend 2 1/2 weeks in Japan. The first question many people have asked me is simply "Why? If you're a French teacher, why would you want to go to Japan?"

I guess that the question surprises me because, although I try to come up with a reasonable explanation for the questioner, in my mind I'm thinking "Why wouldn't I want to go? It's a free trip to Japan!"

Maybe I should explain how the whole trip came to be. Each year for the past several years, I (along with many other teachers across the country) have received an email from JFMF (Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund) which outlined their program for teachers to travel to Japan. The government of Japan established JFMF to show the Japanese people's appreciation for the U.S. Fulbright Program, through which more than 6,800 Japanese have received scholarships. The goal of JFMF is to increase the level of understanding between Japan and the U.S. and to provide teachers and administrators with significant professional development opportunities (www.fulbrightmemorialfund.jp).

I love to travel. Let me say it again--I LOVE to travel. I love anticipating a trip, I love being on a trip and I love coming home from a trip and thinking about everything that I saw and did. When I was a kid, my family took trips. My parents were both teachers and in the summers we often traveled. Not fancy vacations or cruises, but we saw a lot. We traveled across the U.S. (The pictures to the right are of my brother and me at Frontier Town in Ocean City, MD.) My brother and I give my parents a hard time now about the educational travel that they "forced" upon us and about the hardships of staying in campgrounds in scenic areas rather than in hotels in exciting cities, but the truth is that I liked those trips very much. As an adult, I've chaperoned many trips to Europe with students and I've traveled to Venezuela once to take some Spanish classes and experience Angel Falls, but I've never been to Asia. So the simple answer to the question of "Why?" is "Because I've never been there before!"

Europe, which I discuss at length in my French classes is different from the U.S., but not radically so. The people look like us, the food is somewhat similar and European history is absolutely intertwined with American history. What about Japan? I know very little about Asian culture, very little about Japan. I've never even eaten sushi, except for california rolls, which I'm pretty sure don't exist in Japan. At the age of 40-something, I'm ready for an experience that is completely different from any that I've had before.

And of course, the fact that it's a trip that's completely paid for by the Japanese government is another plus for a teacher. I'm a single woman with a mortgage and a bad internet shopping habit, so "all expenses paid" definitely grabs my attention. And not having to be responsible for the safety and happiness of a group of my students is certainly an attractive proposition. This time, I'm the one who will be "taken care of" and my only job will be to learn, see and experience as much as I can.

So a week from today, I'll be leaving my house at 4:30 a.m. to get a plane from Charlottesville to Washington to San Francisco to meet up with the 199 other teachers who will be flying on to Tokyo the following day. I'll need to adjust my Bonjour to Konnichiwa!