So. I really don't like mass emails, but I would like to let everyone who's interested know what I'm doing for these 8 months of my life-- thus the blog. I know it's been a while, about a month and a half at this point, since I moved here, and longer since I've talked to some of you, but I thought that sending this out late would be better than not doing it at all.

I'm going to start by bringing this up to date, but since it's been so long, I'm going to post a series of entries, to keep them short enough to read! There will be pictures, too.

...moving on to the actual updating...

I don't know how much you know about how I got to where I am today and what I'm doing these 8 months, but I'll give you the basic outline just in case:

When we graduated this past spring, I knew I wanted to take a year off from school, but I also wanted to know where I would go in the fall of 2007. I ended up deferring from Reed College. When school ended, I didn't know what I'd be doing for my year; I'd applied to a bunch of programs through AmeriCorps, a public service organization sort of like the Peace Corps but only within the States, but hadn't heard back from them yet.

(If you're wondering why I only applied to things in the U.S., the truth is this: I would have liked to be doing something of service in a different country, but I read a lot about it, and it seems to me that a lot of young people in America who want to do some good in a gap year go somewhere else to help, when there is so much that needs doing here; it's kind of hypocritical to not do anything about the problems of your own country while you go off somewhere else and try to help with theirs. The problem is also that a lot of people think they're helping so much when they go to a Third World country and help out, but in fact a lot of programs are very much ways for well-off individuals to see "exotic" locales while feeling good and charitable, and not very effective. The few I did see that looked and sounded like they were really there for doing good work actually cost money-- the communities those programs worked in could not afford to support themselves, much less an extra person used to a much higher standard of living. I need to make money, not spend it, so that I can contribute to my own tuition at college. For all those reasons, I didn't even apply to any overseas programs or jobs.)

I worked for a time for the Choate Alumni Association, calling alumni and asking them for money. It was, needless to say, not the greatest job ever. I'd looked for others, but I didn't find anything I could do for just a month or so. The reason I needed a place to work for that short a time was that Chloë and I were going to Tokyo for a month in July, an utterly AMAZING gift from Chloë's parents. My mom said I could go so long as I found a year-off job to pay for my student contribution to Reed before I left. While I was working for Choate, I applied to a second round of AmeriCorps internships, ones more focused on the environment, as well as City Year in San José, California, and did some interviews. One of the ones I found about two and a half weeks before I left for Japan was a program called th Desert Restoration Corps, which was described as several crews of about 8 people each whose job was to help the desert recover from being regularly run over by people on OHVs (Off-Highway Vehicles, also known as All-Terrain Vehicles/ATVs-- stuff like dirtbikes and four-wheelers). After I applied, I was sent a link to a bunch of photos from the program. People looked happy, and the landscape was not only beautiful, it was totally unfamiliar. The whole atmosphere put off by the pictures was really relaxed and great, and the work would be manual labor, not teaching (most AmeriCorps positions are for teachers in some way). They finally contacted me about having an interview about a week before I was supposed to leave for Japan, and scheduled a time on the day before I was supposed to leave. I did a phone interview with them in the morning, and that afternoon got in the car and drove up to Chloë's house. As I was in the car, stopped for gas along the way, I get a phone call from Cody, the person who'd interviewed me. He offered me the job, and I went from totally exhausted and anxious (from preparing for the trip) to ecstatic! A great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I went to Japan feeling awesome- I knew what I'd be coming back to do!

Here are a couple pictures from that trip:

Me in Harajuku, a section of Tokyo that we spent a lot of time in.

Chloë's and my host mother, Tomoko, and I, on a trip to the mountains.

Chloë's and my host father, known to us as "Otousan" ("Father").

Chloë and I in our yukata! We went to see Kabuki in them, and all the old ladies thought it was really cute.

Our feet, in a park where we later saw a band called Merry. Don't our feet look happy? :-)

That's all I can handle typing for now, but later today I'll try to actually get to pictures of what I'm doing now up.