Land Of The Rising Sun

JAPAN! I've always wanted to go for as long as I can remember and now its finally booked! As soon as I finish my placement in China, I will be catching a plane to Hong Kong and then taking the short 4 1/2 hour flight over to Japan! Not only will I get to see and experience the country but I'll also get to do all of this with my trusty Asian Caucasian Tina Newton !

Tina has been loads of times so we're renting a flat and hopefully going to get to see all the great sights. Hopefully by this time in July I should be a bit more at ease with the culture in Asia and it shouldn't be a huge culture shock. So over the few weeks we're over in Japan I do have a long list of things I want to visit. Hopefully my tour guide Tina will know how to get there!

So here is a rough list of all the sights I hope to get done:

-Tokyo Disneyland Resort

-Shinjuku Gardens

-Tokyo National Museum of Science and Nature

-Ueno Park

-Ginza

-Shibuya

-Sensoji Temple

And that's only the half of it! Hopefully when you check back here in 6 months time I will be able to blog about all of these things and more! So this was just a quick update on what else I'm going to be doing while over in the East and I should be able to give a more detailed update when I'm actually over there!

One month and counting!

So just a brief overview of what exactly I will be doing over the next 6 months. I applied for a position as an English teacher volunteer in China with a non-profitable charity scheme called Lattitude Global Volunteering. I had to fill out an application form, have an interview and was finally accepted to volunteer in China from February 2011 - July 2011, returning just in time for University!

Its roughly about 4 weeks until I finally set off on the trip to China, first flying from Heathrow to Hong Kong and then another flight to main land China to a place called Kunming. Here I will have my first week of teacher training to prepare myself for my stay in a local school. I will then be setting off to a school in the province of Yunnan. It is located in Yuxi City and is called Yuxi No 1 Middle School. Although I will be actually staying at the school alone, I will only be around 20-30 mins away from my fellow volunteer Natalie Sew (make sure to check her blog out) and I know she will be my 'go-to girl' when I need some company haha.

Around 2 weeks ago, all of the volunteers who are heading off to Asia (China, Japan and Vietnam) this year headed down to Reading Town Hall for a pre-departure briefing. It was amazing just how many people were there! It was a really good day and we all got to have a chat and get to know each other before the dreaded 13hour flight to Hong Kong. I had already spoken to most of the guys there over the past few months, mostly Becca Dickenson (also check out her blog) who has practically done all of my medical research, baggage allowance and most things on my information list for me! Anyways we got a load of information about China, where we are going, whats expected of us, the classes (around 60 students! practically 10 times bigger than my A-level classes at Ratcliffe College!) and send off our visa forms, which by the way I only had to re-write FOUR times!

So now I have all the information about the trip, I'm just trying to get my act together. Contact my University about my accommodation and student finance. Write a list of all the medical supplies, school supplies and my essentials that I need to take. Despite the fact most of my fellow volunteers will be taking a rucksack with them (Prancing turtles anyone?!) I opted for a huge suitcase with wheels as I am mostly using pretty urban routs in China, as well as it offers a little extra security for when flying out there. But I will be taking a small bag for when we all meet up and see the sights every so often!

I can't tell you how excited I am about this trip and I know the guys going with me are just as restless to get going. So I urge you to keep coming back on here to keep up to date with everything I get up to, I'll try and post a reminder on Facebook when I post a blog if I can get around the Chinese blocked Internet!