A New Vigorous Year!
Hello Livejournal!
It's been quite a week - splendid one at that. I'm back in SoCal at Soka. I flew out of Japan at 5pm on the 20th and arrived in LAX at 11am that same day. Curious how timezones work. But the flight was uber fun - I made 3 friends during my trip. I sat next to a Westcoast US Marine named Ric who had served a year in a quite deserted island hundreds of miles off the Indian coast. We hit it off quickly and before the plane even departed, he was showing me pictures from his laptop of his travels around the world. We'd talked for 9 hours straight, about all kinds of things like the Winchester mystery house, castles in Germany, unfriendly rural villagers of Southern Spain, and so forth. He was in the crux of young and old, but charming and resembled Daniel Craig a bit. Also, on my way to the water stand, I met a really drunk father from Quebec who I ended up giving parenting advice to. He was very friendly though and was impressed by the Soka values I shared. :) And then I met another college girl from Quebec who had been studying abroad for a year at an Australian art school. She was hobbling behind me in the immigration line so I offered to carry a couple of her 6 bags. Apparently, she had a 23kg sculpture in her backpack and was getting crushed, the poor thing. So that was my fun 11 hour trip. I wish I had the contact info for Ric and the last girl, though I guess that'd be kinda weird since we're really not related in any way other than sharing the same flight. Either way, I find myself thinking of them every now and then.
Anyway, coming back to Soka is really envigorating! I felt like a tourist walking back on the travertine campus! I had forgot just how beautiful it is here. And it's great being back with Kenji and Natalia and all the others. Right now, it's mostly freshman and a few upperclassmen who are either SSU leaders, Student Orientation Leaders, or RAs.
I also went on an SSU leaders' retreat Tuesday thru Thursday with scottwilliams and 12 others. We lugged our sleeping bags and duffles at 7:30 Tuesday morning onto a snazzy Prom-night-party-van. It was all set up, with glass goblets to mirror balls and disco lights and everything. Too bad most of us slept through the whole ride. When we woke up we were somewhere 7500ft above sealevel in a alpine meadow with log cabins and creeks and hundreds of acres of pine trees. The view was totally worthy of inland Canada. So we spent two nights there doing teamwork trust activities, canoeing, archery, bonfires and a good amount of Taboo. And had many failed attempts catching some of the chipmunks and squirrels.
So that, and coming back, been spending my time with Ryan and Eppon, my dear AD Chair teammates, planning out the year. And I had my first unofficial meeting with Song Committee prepping for the year as well. I can't wait till everyone comes back. I miss every single person in my class and above and I'm certain this academic year is going to be bomb. But I'm in no rush to start off the hectic schedule. Tomorrow I'll probably go to the beach with Kenji to celebrate a belated one year anniversary. Might go and see Dark Knight again JUST CUZ.
Oh and my room looks awesome. You'll see in good time. But I got beaaaauutiful yellow and white striped bedsheets at IKEA and a new lamp and oh so cool interior stuff. I've got postcards in antique-ish picture frames all over and yeah you'll just have to wait and see.
It's been quite a week - splendid one at that. I'm back in SoCal at Soka. I flew out of Japan at 5pm on the 20th and arrived in LAX at 11am that same day. Curious how timezones work. But the flight was uber fun - I made 3 friends during my trip. I sat next to a Westcoast US Marine named Ric who had served a year in a quite deserted island hundreds of miles off the Indian coast. We hit it off quickly and before the plane even departed, he was showing me pictures from his laptop of his travels around the world. We'd talked for 9 hours straight, about all kinds of things like the Winchester mystery house, castles in Germany, unfriendly rural villagers of Southern Spain, and so forth. He was in the crux of young and old, but charming and resembled Daniel Craig a bit. Also, on my way to the water stand, I met a really drunk father from Quebec who I ended up giving parenting advice to. He was very friendly though and was impressed by the Soka values I shared. :) And then I met another college girl from Quebec who had been studying abroad for a year at an Australian art school. She was hobbling behind me in the immigration line so I offered to carry a couple of her 6 bags. Apparently, she had a 23kg sculpture in her backpack and was getting crushed, the poor thing. So that was my fun 11 hour trip. I wish I had the contact info for Ric and the last girl, though I guess that'd be kinda weird since we're really not related in any way other than sharing the same flight. Either way, I find myself thinking of them every now and then.
Anyway, coming back to Soka is really envigorating! I felt like a tourist walking back on the travertine campus! I had forgot just how beautiful it is here. And it's great being back with Kenji and Natalia and all the others. Right now, it's mostly freshman and a few upperclassmen who are either SSU leaders, Student Orientation Leaders, or RAs.
I also went on an SSU leaders' retreat Tuesday thru Thursday with scottwilliams and 12 others. We lugged our sleeping bags and duffles at 7:30 Tuesday morning onto a snazzy Prom-night-party-van. It was all set up, with glass goblets to mirror balls and disco lights and everything. Too bad most of us slept through the whole ride. When we woke up we were somewhere 7500ft above sealevel in a alpine meadow with log cabins and creeks and hundreds of acres of pine trees. The view was totally worthy of inland Canada. So we spent two nights there doing teamwork trust activities, canoeing, archery, bonfires and a good amount of Taboo. And had many failed attempts catching some of the chipmunks and squirrels.
So that, and coming back, been spending my time with Ryan and Eppon, my dear AD Chair teammates, planning out the year. And I had my first unofficial meeting with Song Committee prepping for the year as well. I can't wait till everyone comes back. I miss every single person in my class and above and I'm certain this academic year is going to be bomb. But I'm in no rush to start off the hectic schedule. Tomorrow I'll probably go to the beach with Kenji to celebrate a belated one year anniversary. Might go and see Dark Knight again JUST CUZ.
Oh and my room looks awesome. You'll see in good time. But I got beaaaauutiful yellow and white striped bedsheets at IKEA and a new lamp and oh so cool interior stuff. I've got postcards in antique-ish picture frames all over and yeah you'll just have to wait and see.