2 weeks

Let's pretend that I'm a diligent writer and that I didn't forget to blog for 2 weeks in a row.
That means that you already know about the end of summer school, my visit with some out-of-town family, my AMAZING trip to Iron Springs Resort on the Washington coast, and my general laziness in between all of those.
Since my last post (that being one week ago, since I keep up with writing so attentively) I have but three note-worthy things.
(These are not in chronological order.)
1. My visa arrived!!! There was little question before as to whether or not my visa would be granted, but actually seeing my passport with the sticker on it was extremely reassuring.
2. Karate has been awesome, which while not out of the ordinary does provide a good break from my mind, which is constantly in a state of stress/excitement.
3. I had a family reunion. I love my family dearly, and they were all very supportive of me leaving for a year, although I did get the classic (O_o) look from some when they heard exactly how long I will be gone.
Besides these things, steady progress is being made on things such as clothing-shopping and the collection of little gifts for my host family.
I am trying my best to take advantage of all the little moments that I still have in the U.S. and I try to not cry too much about all of the goodbyes I have made/will be making in the next couple of weeks...
Thanks for reading!

6.... oh wait, 5 weeks.

So sorry about missing Week 6, in my defense, I flew to San Francisco that day.
Once in San Francisco, my mom and I took a couple of hours to try and figure out the BART/bus system in what seemed to be a whole 'nother world from Seattle. Once to our hotel, a cute Japanese hotel right in the Japantown of San Francisco (it was also walking-distance from the consulate, which was necessary for our sanity as far as transportation goes).
The day after we arrived, we set out towards the consulate, our backpack full of important-looking documents and approximately 3,214 copies of each of them. We arrived outside the consulate about an hour before our appointment, and they prefer that you do not come in more than 10 minutes early, so we looked around and found a Mediterranean food hole-in-the-wall place. We sat down in the little shop, and I had the best breakfast EVER (incredible iced chai latte, olives, hummus, pita, babghanoush, and cake for desert!).
We entered the matchbox-sized lobby 11 minutes early, and joined the sizable (for that space) crowd of people all ready waiting anxiously. We got everything in order, and had my appointment. It went well, with just a couple things needing fixing.
Afterwards we headed home to our hotel, and we enjoyed the beautiful view out of our window.
The rest of the trip went very well, we both got cute haircuts and spent a day on the beach.

Fastforward to this week: my birthday!!
Due to my immense skills of procrastination, I was able to put off planning anything until it was almost too late. Lucky for me, a close family friend of mine was hosting a party a couple of days before and I decided to bake cupcakes (dry) for all of the end-of-july birthdays (two).
It was enough of a party for me, especially since I am almost completely booked for the rest of the summer getting ready for my departure.
The actual day of my birthday was spent with my dad and involved a delicious lunch from Panera, a nap (him), homework for summer school (me), and a slightly rushed dinner in order to get me off to karate in time.

That's about all that has happened to me, I imagine I will be busier in the coming five weeks (is it just me, or is that an altogether too short amount of time?)

Thanks for reading!

7 WEEKS!

Well.
Let's see here about the last week of my life.
Turns out, besides the daily summer school routine, the three-times-a-week karate (which I love) and the semi-constantly worrying about where I'm going in, oh gosh, 49 days, my life is really, really boring.
Amidst the large, overly warm (it's been 90 degrees more than once in the past week. Let's get it together Washington) void of boring that has been my life, one glorious day had a (small) reason to celebrate. (That last sentence may have been just a bit glorified, but what is life without a little poetic license?)
Anywho, this day to remember was simply the day that the long-awaited visa papers came from AFS and we finally had everything(ish) ready to go for the Visa Application Day, which is coming up quickly.
Turns out, the Visa paperwork was infinitely less complicated than AFS makes it out to be, although it was not a sans-stress process (see earlier posts).
Alright, well that is about it for this week.
I will post more next week and I suppose the countdown is officially on and I can finally quote Sherlock Holmes, though in this case, I won't be chasing down a criminal...
"The game's afoot!"

8 WEEKS??!?

I realize that that sounds like not a lot of time, but it seems to be creeping up on me suspiciously quickly.
I have said my good-byes to too many people, including Molly, who I recently saw at the airport (a great surprise) and Olivia, who is (*sniff* *sniff* 'oh goodness, don't cry.') going to Utah for forever. These goodbyes bring the imminency of the departure date closer and closer and before I know it, that fateful day will be upon us and I will have to wave goodbye one last time to my friends and family.
Anyway, nothing much has happened concretely since I last posted, but all of a sudden I realized that in two months exactly, I would be gone. I think I have had this idea that everything just ends as soon as my countdown ends. Now, unfortunately, this dilusion has ended, and the reality of what I will have to wear after this countdown is setting in. That's right. Packing.
Oh, dear goodness, packing. You have to understand, normally packing is a two-hours-before-I-leave kind of activity, and I almost always forget something or another. This time however, I have made a list, and I think I will do it right, choosing what is really the most important etc. etc. etc.  Let me tell ya, (yes, 'ya' is now an acceptable variation of 'you', unlike 'u'.) this is muy stressful.
Ok, that is about all for today, I will keep y'all (again, I think that that is acceptable english) posted as to what goes on, and hopefully figure out how to put pictures on here.
Thanks for reading. :)

So many things to tell you...

I'm so sorry I have not posted in a while. I have finals at school and I have otherwise been swamped. Part of this month of crazy started on May 10th, when I and my parents attended the pre-departure orientation (PDO). This was an all-day thing, and it was information heavy. For the first part of the day, parents and students were together, and we all went over some of the main rules for AFS. They are pretty common sense-y type stuff: no drugs, no driving, no hitchhiking. They also, in the first part of the day told us some horror stories about past AFSers being sent home early, being forced to change houses without warning, etc. I will admit, they were a little scary.
For the second part of the day, the parents stayed in one room (to discuss plane tickets, monetary things, etc.) and the students (that's me!) went to another room. After some pretty typical icebreakers we started reading and reacting to scenarios (i.e. a friend from your host school invites you to a party, but you suspect there will be drugs, what do you do?). They then asked us what we would do, and as far as I can tell, there is only two possible answers to every question: talk to your host family, and talk to your 'guardian angel'.
A 'guardian angel' is a volunteer with AFS who has gone through some training and knows who to call for any situation. Every AFSer and their host family is given their 'guardian angel''s phone number, and so has a way to contact them. 'Guardian angels' are not the only name given to people who play this role, it depends on the country. Some, for example, call them 'buddies'. :)
Anyway, this orientation was SUPER information-filled, and although I have poured over every single page of the AFS website, it helps to hear the information from an actual person.
The next (and final) big piece of news that I have neglected to post about is that I got my host family assignment! I am going to have 5 siblings!!! The place I will be staying is outside of Barcelona and it looks so amazing! I have emailed a little with my host family, and I am so looking forward to getting to know all 8 of them. And no, '8' was not a typo, they have a dog! (For those of us who are mathmatically challenged: 5 kids + 2 parents + 1 dog = 8 new family members!)
I will try to be more punctual with my blogging and wish me luck on my finals!

An Un-traditional Easter

My Easter this year was not, one might say, traditional.
I started the day off groggily, with an 8:00am flight from Las Vegas to Seattle. Since I may have to navigate an airport by myself at some point in my time abroad, my parents are on a "figure-it-out-yourself" kick as far as airports go. So today, their job was made easier by the luck-of-the-draw TSA pre-check (as far as I can tell it is luck of the draw).
Small interjection:
For those of you who don't know what TSA pre-check is, it is essentially and expedited security screening at airports. For example, you don't have to remove your shoes or jackets.
Anyway, today I received TSA Pre-Check, but my mom and Alison did not.
So there I was. Faced with a looming decision between a long, horrible looking line filled with angry travelers and crying children, or a nice, quiet lane with almost no people in it (at that point it looked a bit like the promise land.) If you couldn't tell by my above description, it was a no-brainer.
After we got through the security check-point (another small interjection: that is by far the most stressful part of the trip, since the angry people behind you make you feel as though you must go through at about six-thousand miles an hour.) it was smooth sailing.
The flight was uneventful, which, really, is how we like our flights.
We arrived at home at around noon on Easter Sunday, the first Sunday I remember that I have not hunted for eggs.
However, and this is where things got interesting, it occurred to me that next year I will not be here to hunt for eggs, and the year after that I will be 16, and maybe at that point it will be time to stop hunting for eggs. So I realized that completely unwittingly I had let my LAST GOOD EASTER SLIP BY!!!!!!!
To cope with this (fairly minor) meltdown, copious amounts of Modern Family (a TV show) did the trick.
To finish off the day, we went to my dad's house for a lovely Easter Dinner (that's a thing, right?).
Third (and I think this is the last one) small interjection: Asparagus. I have never liked asparagus, and it is really one of the only foods that I actually will not eat. But today, in the spirit of trying new foods, I tried the grilled asparagus that my dad served, and I liked it (*gasp*). Then I tried another piece to make sure that my taste buds weren't just mistaken the first time. They weren't, I actually like grilled asparagus... (I do realize that this last short interjection was not all that short, but that's okay.)
Overall, this Easter was one to remember, but hopefully less so that next year's!
Thank you all so much for reading and I hope you had a fantastic Easter!

Meltdown

This week, my school is on spring vacation, and it could not have come at a better time. The weekend before spring break (right after the visa application post) I had a bit of a melt down. See, for those of you fluent in the language of paper-work, it is tedious, but not too often absolutely overwhelming. However, for those of us less experienced paper-work-filler-outers, these long, small print, confusing papers can sometimes push us to the breaking point (ish). So continues my story. Saturday night comes along, and at this point, part one of the visa application has been sent off to receive an apostille (see the * in the previous post to explain what it is). I was sitting there reflecting on the day and my progress on the visa application, when I was suddenly overcome (and here is the part where you have to trust me that I am not crazy) by the sudden desire to just be alone, away from paperwork, away from the constant reminders that I needed to get any number of forms to any number of places. So my poor mother, who was not necessarily part of the problem, but just the nearest victim, got the full wrath of my (and this is the part where I have to admit that maybe I was the tiniest bit crazy) rant. The rant basically consisted  of me needing a day just to MYSELF. This went on for about five minutes. Yeah, five minutes. Anyway, the next day I got up, I ate my Rice Chex, and then I spent the whole day, alone. And it was awesome. I guess the reason I post this, since really none of you care all that much, is to show that going abroad is not all fun and games (even before I actually go abroad). If you are averse to waxing on the philosophical, don't continue reading. My hope is that going abroad will encompass the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, and that this is the beginning of that wonderful roller coaster of emotion. (Sorry I am rereading that and it sounds REALLY cheesy.)
Thanks for reading!