Though I am completing my first blog post during my last opportunity to do so, I believe this allows me to accurately capture my thoughts and emotions before I depart for my study abroad experience in Japan. Throughout the past few days, the realization of spending a whole semester far away from everything I have ever known all my life has started to sink in. I experienced feelings of anxiety and stress just thinking about having to navigate such a new environment by myself for such an extended period of time. I worried about whether or not I would be able to make friends and felt dismayed at having to leave my friends for so long. Now, three hours before the scheduled departure of my flight, I find myself more calm and ready for what lies ahead. I have centered and reminded myself that the most important thing to experience during this trip is the discovery of a completely different culture, the exploration of its customs and its people.<\/p>\n
In terms of identity, I believe my own experiences will – and in fact, are now – undoubtedly impacting my study abroad experience. As someone who has always been familiar with the areas I travel to or can speak the native language of my destination, knowing that I am headed to a place where communication will actually be challenging is both interesting and terrifying. My lack of experience with traveling to areas “outside of my comfort zone” will provide me with an interesting opportunity for self examination: will my lack of exposure to drastically different settings impact my view of this society? I am beyond excited to meet new people from different backgrounds, and to examine their own experiences with the issues I face. I believe everyone sees the world differently as a result of their previous experiences and exposure to the world and how such experiences have shaped their identities. As such, I think it will be interesting to compare the changes in my identity that will result after such prolonged exposure to Japan. I am looking forward to interacting with people who can teach me more than I can ever known through the “normal” facets of my own life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Though I am completing my first blog post during my last opportunity to do so, I believe this allows me to accurately capture my thoughts and emotions before I depart for my study abroad experience in Japan. Throughout the past few days, the realization of spending a whole semester far away from everything I have ever known…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kansai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13524,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12366\/revisions\/13524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}