Final Destination: Kagoshima

April 2nd, 2014

fujisan

(Photo from the window of my plane, you can see Mt. Fuji)

After a whole 4 years in the planing, 2 months worth of packing and preparation, and a 16 hour flight with 2 stopovers, I have finally reached Kagoshima! Here I will be studying as an exchange student for the next 10-11 months. A big big thanks to all my sempais who helped me out to prepare for this and a thank you in advance to the new sempais I have met here today, who will be helping me from now on.

I have settled into my dorm and just finished unpacking all my luggage. Now for some well deserved sleep. Tomorrow will be a long day of shopping and meeting with teachers.

Preparations for Japan – Farewells

March 30th, 2014

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Visa and plane tickets have been acquired, packing has been done, all my boxes have been moved to my Imouto’s and Lexi’s place, and now all the farewell lunches, dinners, and parties are now done. I have 1 day left in Sydney and then I am off to glorious Japan.  Thank you to all my friends who took the time from their busy lives to meet me one last time this year, before I head off. Thank you for giving such a wonderful experience in so many different restaurants. Thank you to the anime club, drawing circle and JASS people (especially Ritchi) for organizing a farewell party last week before the Kyary concert. Thank you to all my friends from urbanest, all my Russian friends and my friends from back home for this last week.

Also 2 of my closest friends had their birthdays this week. Ruben and Tac.

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Numbers and Budgets

March 18th, 2014

Numbers

My new years resolution was to be more organised and get more control over my money. And the one thing that helped me achieve this goal was the App – Numbers.

Even though I masterly avoided using any Microsoft software throughout university so far, ever since I started working, I was required to use Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Mainly when dealing with numbers and calculations, I was told to use Excel, even though I have never used it in my life (never had the need so to say). Well That help me get an understanding of how spreadsheets work, but to be honest, it wasn’t a very pleasant experience. Of course many people will argue that the functionality of Excel is all that matters, but alas no, if the design is bad, then I don’t feel I want to use the application any more then I have to.

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Preparations for Japan – Packing

February 27th, 2014

packing

Yesterday I started putting away all the figures that have made my shelves their home. Now they are back in their cramped up boxes and those boxes are in another box (Yo DAWG~). Now my shelves are so empty and soon my whole room will be as well. It is sad to leave the place that you called home for over 3 years now, but I must look ahead and welcome my new place in Japan!

Today I must start sorting though my endless pile of clothes to pick what I can give back to my parents to take back to Latvia, what to leave in Sydney and what I need to take with me to Japan for my ICS. This will be tough task, but somebody’s gotta do it!

Birthday 1.11 – You can (not) unwrap

February 23rd, 2014

MorePresents

Continuing on with my birthday celebrations from the 1st of February, I had 2 more parties. One with my friends from urbanest on the 8th of February, exactly a week after my official birthday and then one more today with my friends Ruben and Clara, who couldn’t make it to my birthday on the 1st. (And Seb was there too) We went to IKEA and had a lot of meatballs! So many that I didn’t even have dinner. Ruben and Clara gave me the amazing Shinobu heroin book and the new Latvian euros, which they had ship from Latvia! Thank you so much! I did however have to go through 6 layers of wrapping…… again……

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my friends from urbanest for their gifts. Especially Anna for the Beautiful World photo book, I must definitely visit all these places! And thanks to Dennis who got the guys together to get me a big chessboard, which me and Amy have already broken in, so to say. Also Darrell, thank you for the newest edition to my hard drive family, it is so small cute and white that I can barely resist myself.

I think I have a few more presents coming soon, so I might expand this post later on. Stay tuned.

Sochi 2014

February 9th, 2014

sochi 2014

The 22nd winter Olympic Games have just begun in Sochi Russia! For any country hosting an Olympic Games is a great honor and Russia hasn’t had a chance since the 1980 summer Olympics in Moscow. Its been tough on Russia, they had to building all the venues and hotels from scratch, spending an amazing 51 billion dollars on infrastructure, new stadiums and hotels. But they managed to get all of it done on time (almost) and they Olympics have officially begun a few days ago with the amazing opening ceremony, which showcased the history of Russia with beautiful ballet and performances.

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My 21st – such Madoka, much Ghibli, wow

February 3rd, 2014

Birthday_2014

This year I have officially become an adult (in every country); I turned 21! Every year up until now I got to spend this special day with my 2 most special people – my mommy and my daddy, but this year we did not get the chance to meet up to celebrate it together, but nevertheless I had a great day with my friends – yay!

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JLPT N2 Passed!

January 30th, 2014

JLPT logo-2

In Autumn of 2013 (March) I set myself a goal. That goal was to buy textbooks, study them thoroughly, take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test and pass it. I am very grateful, that I realized this so early in the year and had more then enough time to prepare for the exam which was on the 1st of December.  And now I got my results back, and guess what – I PASSED!

I had a lot of time to study and I spend countless hours on learning kanji, vocabulary and grammar. And it payed off! The exam was hard, like I don’t usually call exams hard and challenging as they are usually really easy for me even without studying, but this was. I put a lot of effort and I achieved the result I wanted. Usually I am not that excited for my success cause that is just the natural progression of things – I do not fail. But this time I was very very very happy to see my pass, as I know I had to put in a lot of work to achieve it, whereas normally it would just come to me anyway.

Kites at Centennial Park

January 28th, 2014

IMG_318926th of January – Australia Day. Its a day of celebration, aussie BBQs and kites! Drawing Circle and the Japanese Australian Students Society (JASS) had a joint event at Centennial Park which was a sort of BBQ / drawing session and kite making workshop. Around 20 people came and overall it was a great joint event, even though it was rather cloudy (with a chance of meatballs).  But that didn’t stop multiple groups of aussies gathering together with their family and friends to celebrate this day together.

For me though, it was a good opportunity to catch up with people who I missed and couldn’t see due to me being constantly busy with work. And so I did. Too bad my lovely girl couldn’t be there with me on this funtastic day, but I got to spend a whole day with her before for our 4 month anniversary. We watched anime, had lunch, went to Kino, and drank some good white wine.

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Happy Australia Day 2014

January 26th, 2014

Australia-Day

It is now my fourth year in the land down under and the fourth time I get to celebrate Australia day with friends and (host) family. Last year I went to Melbourne to watch the Australian Open finals, and I can now say that they were much better then this years (I hope you are ok Nadal, I was rooting for you). This year I stayed in Sydney and went out with my friends from JASS and The Drawing Circle, which I will be making a blog post about tomorrow as some of my friends have yet to upload their photos.

Anyway, happy Australia Day!