Before the exchange trip to Japan (my thoughts)

Hey guys!

I'm Manou, a 16 year old girl from Canada. I will be going to Kanagawa, Japan as an exchange student. I will be going into a high school there for five months. As you can probably guess, I am very excited while being anxious as well. It is a once in a life time experience that many don't have the chance to obtain!

With this intriguing trip before my eyes, I am still very worried about my soon to come adventure. I grew up in Canada, French and English being my first languages, eating crepes with maple syrup and enjoying over 30 cm of snow in winter. I didn't realize until recently how hard it would be to leave my house and home country for such an extended period of time. It is very hard to leave my home which contains all my treasures and junks. My family and friends are also a major factor to my anxiousness. With my schedule, I won't be able to spend Christmas, New Year, and most importantly, my mother's birthday with them. Only thinking about those times would make me feel painful. Some of my friends would be leaving when I come back as well; some are graduating high school while others are leaving the country. I have noticed, ever since graduating elementary school, that once you are not in the same place as someone any more, there is only distance that keeps on growing that's left. In my host school in Japan, I will not know anybody and I would have to find my way through the halls, which let me tell you, isn't my strongest point! Now, worries such as "What if they hate me?" "What if I have to spend lunch alone?" "What if I have bad relations with my host family?" "What if I don't understand the language or the culture?" start settling in.

Then, there's the worry of getting bad grades or simply not understanding anything in class (except English class maybe). The company I am with requires the students to obtain a minimum grade of C- (which in the Canadian standard is a 50) and that kind of worries me about the fundamental classes such as Japanese class and Math. I know that Japanese classes will have kanji tests which to be honest, I prefer not to talk about it, and in Math, not meaning to be racist in any way, is much harder than the North American standard.

Considering all of these 'problems', I can only tell myself that "All this is just imagination! You haven't been in a Japanese school before, you won't know until you get there!"

"You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you; the world is ahead."

-Gandalf the Grey (The Hobbit: An unexpected Journey)

Finally, thank you so much to even have clicked on this blog!

If you have any questions, advice or other things, please don't hesitate to contact me (I don't bite!) at

liumanou@gmail.com

I will have a Tumblr account soon that I will try to update too!
Don't forget to comment and share!!

Manou :D