A Week and Counting

It is hard to believe that a week from today I will join 199 other American educators in San Francisco for the first step in our Japan adventure! We will perch briefly on the western shore of the United States, ready to board a plane the next day to fly across the Pacific Ocean to Tokyo, Japan's capital city. Judging by the flurry of emails among us, our group is a very lively and interesting group of teachers -- all kinds of teachers (art teachers, classroom teachers, English and history teachers, physical education teachers, librarians like me) and administrators, from all over the United States -- who have read and studied and planned for months and are now really ready to go. Well, almost! I for one still need every moment of this week to attend to details at home and school, but nothing diminishes the excitement of the trip. My friend Jamie knew her bank could exchange dollars for yen on the spot, so I have some Japanese money (pictured below), and I have my new "indoor slippers" (you probably know that street shoes are not worn into Japanese homes and special places). Of course, I have had my passport ready for a while, and I just received yesterday the bilingual business cards we are expected to carry with us -- English on one side, Japanese on the other. Pretty cool.