Alysse Abroad

I filmed this a while ago (October 20th, to be exact) so my daily life is different now.  But, my video camera records in .MOV, which is a completely useless file type unless you have a Mac computer, so I have been figuring out how to convert them up until now.  But, converting the files created a lot of corruptions, so then I had to go and try to cut them all out (you will see that I most definitely did not do this successfully) and actually create the video.  So, here's my life from Autumn quarter. The corruptions that you can just skip over are between 6:19 - 8:50, 13:39 - 14:14, 14:46 - 15:03, 16:56 - 17:28, and 18:00 - 18:18. I put more time and effort into this thing than it was worth and I don't even care to go back and fix those parts now.  But all you missed was the inside of the dining commons and my walk back into my dorm, and then my egg and toast dinner, and the explanation about what we were freaking out about, which was that someone (later figured ou...

One of the most exciting things about living in Japan for a year, to me, is that I will finally get to experience four full seasons.  Summer was nice, beautiful, much too hot, but enjoyable nonetheless.  Fall has just been a jaw droppingly beautiful thing to experience (I could go on forever about these vibrant colors) and now, Winter has come!  I've seen snow before, of course, but I've never woken up and seen snow out my own bedroom window.  Us Californians don't get to experience nature.  But, I thought it was just so cool that I needed to video it and show you my bed-head reaction to Winter!

On November 25th I got on a bus headed toward Iwate, a coastal prefecture in Northern Japan located half way between the Northernmost part before the Hokkaido island, and Fukushima, where, on March 11th a powerplant encountered many difficulties and became dangerous to the surrounding area.  The city we went to was called Rikuzentakata.  Rikuzentakata is a unique place, because it is located in a nook of land with the sea accessible on two sides. Before I go any further into this story, I want to explain why I am bothering at all.  Unless you were very young on March 11th, 2011 or have no access to the media, you are fully aware of what happened in Norhern Japan, and realize the destruction it caused.  So, why bring it up again?  It is true that, by telling you about my experience in Iwate, I will not change what happened.  But that is not my purpose.  What I ask of you is that you simply never forget what you know.  As of now, eight months a...