Alysse Abroad

In this post I will summarize my budget and expenses during my year abroad.  Please note that general living expenses will vary based on a number of things, including the lifestyle of the person, the current exchange rate (during this time -2011 - 2012- it was between 70 and 85 cents to the 100 yen), the costs of things in general at the time, and personal preferences and ability to budget. These amounts are listed in yen.  They are approximate numbers. Living: Summer term room and board (Ginkgo House): 80,000 Autumn term room and board (Global House): 206,000 Winter term room and board (Global House): 206,000 Spring term room and board (Global House):  206,000 Bedding: 14,700 --- Required rented Noguchi Co. bedding (all bedsheets, blankets, pillows, futon, etc) for one year. NOTE: "room and board" includes the dorm living amount and extra dorm fees. One time expenses: Required insurance: 8,000 to 10,000 Bicycle: 10,000 --- I highly recommend buying a bicyc...

This is a long, extensive, and boring tour of the library.  I figured someone out there may be interested in seeing it, so I filmed it.  The library is multiple stories and has a lot in it, so it took me a while.  I began filming from the entrance/exit of D-Kan because: 1. I had just filmed my previous tour of D-Kan, and 2. to give some perspective on where the library is located.  Enjoy :]

This is a tour of Honkan, the main building for classrooms.  There are a couple other buildings that have classrooms in them, but they are specifically for certain subjects (such as science).  One thing I forgot to mention in the tour was that the UC center for UC exchange students is located on the second floor next to the left flight of stairs, and the campus clinic is located on the third floor next to the left flight of stairs. (When I say left, I mean if you are standing in the lobby by the elevator facing the windows, the way I was when I filmed this.)

As promised, I have returned to give some final information about ICU.  I have a few tours of various parts of the campus that I will be uploading.  The first is a tour of "D-Kan," meaning D building.  D-Kan is right next to the post office, in the middle of the campus, and has a study/lunch room, a small area to buy food and drinks, and is home to the campus bookstore.  There is more to D-Kan than what I filmed, but these are the important parts of the building.

As the end of my time here approaches, I'm having mixed feelings.  I remember when I could barely believe I'd been here for a full month, and now I can barely believe I only have one month left. Studying abroad is an experience I will treasure for the rest of my life and then some. I highly recommend anyone who has the chance to allow yourself this experience. I have grown so much, learned so much, and experienced an unbelievable amount of things I never would have if I hadn't taken this leap into the unknown a year ago.  There are no words to describe how incredibly thankful I am to have had this experience. I am thankful to whatever or whoever the force of life is in the hands of for pushing me down this path, to my family and friends for being so supportive of me, for the new people I have met all over Japan (both the ones I will remain close to forever and those I will never speak to again) for shaping my time here, and my life in the process, and to myself for being ...

Something pretty exciting happened to me today.  I got an email from Youtube informing me that my account had been getting enough views to be eligible for partnership.  Now there will be advertisements before and during some of my videos.  I know ads kind of suck, but I may actually be able to make a couple of cents off of them.  If you would like to help me out with this awesome new opportunity, you could click the small ads that appear at the bottom of the video while you watch it.  For every click, I could earn a teeny tiny amount of money.  If not, just ex out of them; that's okay too! I hope the advertisements don't become annoying.  If they do, I will turn them off, just let me know! Thanks!

Something I forgot to mention in my video was that starting next week my dorm will be playing a game of Assassins.  So me and my friends decided to make a little movie trailer for it, just for fun (and because we didn't feel like studying).  The trailer is below the vlog.Keep your fingers crossed for me that I won't get killed on the morning of the first day like I did last time I played Assassins!

Just so you know, this is my schedule for my final quarter here at ICU (how sad!)  

Note: I recorded this video on Saturday, about what I did Saturday, but I didn't finish it until Sunday, so I'm putting it up Sunday.

Hey everyone (if there even is anyone out there anymore after this long absence of mine), I spent quite a bit of time filming and editing these videos for you, so watch them please! And I will be back more frequently from now on.

Dear world, Please, whatever you do, do not get seriously ill in Japan.  Should you realize one day that you are not feeling quite up to par, you will not receive any real help from the doctors here in Japan.  They will either tell you that you are not ill at all, or that you are deathly ill.  I say this from personal experience as well as many, many stories from friends. So on Wednesday, I woke up feeling like a train had just run itself right through my body.  Overnight I had suddenly developed a pounding headache, constant chills that I could feel down to my bone marrow, aches in every muscle, joint, and bone, a cough that refused to stop once it got rolling, a sore throat, the strength of a dead snail, and the sensation that an ogre was taking tap dance lessons on my chest.  So Thursday, when this persisted, I headed over to the clinic.  The doctor then did their usual checkup-y routine on me, and did some chit-chattering.  Then she pulled out a ...

Hey all, Alysse here checking in.  It's finals time, so my butt is in high gear.  Well... it was.  Until I got sick.  But anyway, I've blocked myself from Facebook and Youtube, so until next Friday, it's all books and sleep for me.  I can barely believe nearly 8 of my 12 months have already passed!  Here's to a good Winter's end and an even better Spring's beginning.  I have a lot planned for Spring, so I will be (trying to) keep this blog rolling with it all.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Yokohama with some friends.  I wanted to go initially just because I hadn't been and it's close enough that I don't really have an excuse to not go before I leave Japan, but far away enough that it's not Tokyo, so it's new territory.  Yokohama is a city about 1.5 to 2 hours away from where I am, and it's right on the beach.  We went in the dead of winter, so that beach breeze and moist air was not quite as blissful as I would usually have considered it to be, but it was beautiful all the same. I had missed the smell of the salty water and the sloshing sound the waves make when they hit up against things.  Yokohama turned out to be a really wonderful city.  It has all kinds of things to do, it's really, really, really beautiful, and it has a laid-back kind of vibe to it.  I sort of felt like I was back in San Diego, in a far off, roundabout way, if San Diego had a giant Ferris wheel and a Chinatown. Chinatown was the first ...

These two pictures portray my life right now. I'll post up some real blogs soon, I've just been lazy. You probably don't realize it, but the first one is incredibly hilarious.  Just trust me. The second one is more comfy.

It snowed again.  Last Monday Becci came running into my room telling me it was snowing again, so we watched it fall from the windows, and then I went back to homework.  Later, Mariko called me to say it was snowing, and I told her "Yeah, I know, I saw."  But she said "No, Alysse, it's SNOWING!  Let's go outside!" so I got up to go see it again.  But when I looked out the window I realized it really was SNOWING.  It was sticking everywhere, not just on dirt and plants.  So we abandoned homework and set out to Bakayama, and there was enough for us to go have a huge snowball fight in!  Soon more Global House residents came, followed by people from all over campus.  This is the first time in my life I've had a real, big snowball fight, and let me tell you, a good snowball thrown right really stings!  There were probably about 30 students throwing snowballs at each other, sometimes just within groups of friends, and sometimes groups pitting ...