Cleaning my room

So I am doing a lot of last minute things to get ready to leave - this morning I cleaned my room. It was catastrophic before and now it's crowded, but everything is organized looking. I put all my blankets into shopping bags to contain them and put the futon in the upright position, which gave me space to put the bags of blankets behind. I put a shoe rack in my room and am trying to collect all my shoes onto it so people won't have to trip over them while I am gone. I found a couple books that had been missing and a pair of earrings too. Actually, I found a lot of books, but I wasn't really looking for most of them. I cleared off the heat vent and my room is pretty much ready now.

I downloaded the latest high tech version of AIM and I think I like it. It's got an interface that's very mac-ish, which is good and bad. I was using gaim before (which is nice because you canbe logged in on aim and yahoo and msn simultaneously, but there weren't very many features). This new aim has talk features that my gaim didn't, and I think it will be useful to be able to talk to people through both AIM and skype while I am in Japan. It's also got built in radio stuff, with a very ... wide? variety of stuff. There's an all-Green Day station and a Klezmer station and a British Invasion station (which is playing The Who right now). I want to get XRT streaming, though, and I thought it used the AOL radio thing, but I can't find it... and this AIM thing has a final fantasy station. I'm not sure I can use it anymore...

I like sitting with my computer in my lap when it's cold because it keeps me warm. Which has nothing to do with Japan.

My mom is buying me some presents, called "omiyage" (oh-mee-yah-geh) to give people in Japan, but I am unsure how many I need to take... I don't really know how many Japanese people I will be meeting, and it would be kind of silly to give someone from, say, Australia, a present just because we are meeting in Japan. I have some bowls for the people I stayed with last time and for whoever I stay with on the homestay they are making us do over the Japanese Thanksgiving weekend (which curiously, is November 23rd, the same as American Thanksgiving. Their holiday is Thanksgiving Labor Day, though, they squish the two together, and I highly doubt they eat turkey. Which is okay because we had turkey last Friday and other thanksgivingy foods too).

I am hungry.

meeting

So today I went to this meeting in the office of international affairs and the two guys who went last year and Scott and Steve and I sat around and they talked a lot about people that went to Chiba in the past. I got another map from the train to the dorm, which is pretty much like the other ones, but I think I am clearer on how to get out of the station. I hung out with Scott for a while afterwards (okay, I waited for the bus with him because I had nothing else to do and not really enough time to go home before work) and we talked some. It's kind of weird talking to him because I knew him in high school but he was two years ahead of me and I never really talked to him then (I mean, come on. Juniors don't talk to freshmen and seniors don't talk to sophomores). But it keeps coming up that we went to the same school and both took Japanese then (but he ony took it three years) and so everyone just assumes we're like old friends and have stuff to say to each other.

I must admit, Scott and I both kind of say things about Dave, which is easy because he either a: shows up late or b: doesn't show up at all. And he was saying about how he's just going to say he's Taiwanese and not that he is American and hang out with the chinese kids, which is fine by Scott and me since he's kind of not exactly rude but not exactly going out of his way to be nice, but I think that the Chinese chinese kids are going to snub him saying he is American, not chinese.

The meeting was exceptionally useful in one regard for me, though - this guy Evan who was there last year gave me the key to his bike lock and told me roughly where he left it and stuff, so if I can find a gray bike with a basket that the key fits, I'll have a bicycle as soon as I get there. woot. Which means I will have not brought my bike helmet in vain.

My suitcase weighs 66 pounds. the limit is 70. I cannot add anything else to it. It's full to the point of explosion. So ismy carryon and my backpack. Also, my coat pockets. Too bad it's supposed to be 80 in Chicago on Monday and 75 in Chiba on Tuesday. Otherwise the two coats I am going to be "wearing" would have been useful. It's okay though, I have a bag smushed up right at the top of my ginormous duffle bag to put my coat in.

I need to get a few more passport sized photos to take with. Can anyone think of anything useful I might have forgotten? I also need to get a thermometer.

My grammar is so bad when I type, but I am too lazy to go through and fix it because then I am tempted to get rid of stuff.

getting ready...

I am working on packing my suitcases... it is very time consuming.

Recently, I have come to the conclusion that I am taking wayyyyyyyyyyy too much stuff. Except I don't know what I should leave behind, since I don't really have anything in my bags that I don't use or wear already. gah.