Selling artwork!

So I have decided to begin selling my artwork to help fund my study abroad trip to Kansai Gaidai in August! So far I have gotten over 10 orders in ONE DAY! I am beyond thankful and excited, for money is hard to come by these days. I am planning on traveling a TON my year in Japan, and I am hoping to save over $3000 for my trip, and I only have 5 months to do so! If you all are interested please feel free to check out my artwork page on Facebook! Hopefully this will help me get some money saved, plus working at my job all summer full time! If you check out my page, please like and share my page!

I RECEIVED MY ACCEPTANCE LETTER!

I FINALLY received the dreaded letter, and was ecstatic to see that I was accepted to the Kansai Gaidai study abroad program! I am now on the second part of the study abroad application process. I now have to send materials directly to Kansai Gaidai and attend a pre-departure orientation in April... Which is just around the corner! This whole emotional roller coaster ride has all been worth it. It's hard to grasp the concept that I will be in Japan in only 5 MONTHS... that's the blink of an eye! Now I need to focus on getting the proper materials sent to Kansai Gaidai and making all A's in my current courses. I will post my pre-departure materials on the blog after I attend! I also need to find some time to post another helpful tips post rather than these quick posts about my personal life! On an end note, I was introduced to this amazing video through a friend and I thought I should share (: Please leave me comments and suggestions on what I should post about next! I'm thinking about some interesting culture shock stories!

First blog post!

First blog post! Hello to whoever is reading this! Let me say a couple of interesting things about myself. I have studied abroad in Tokyo, Japan before through a program called LABO, and if you are under 18 years old I HIGHLY recommend it... Even if you don't know much about Japan. It is a very affordable program and you have 2 options from a month homestay  or a month long homestay in Tokyo with Japanese language classes. I stayed a little over 2 months and did both the plain ol' homestay and the language classes. The grand total (with loads of spending money calculated in) it came to about $6000... I know at first that sounds like a lot of dough, but with the experience, the classes, AND airfare... It's the best deal you will ever have. Because of this program I became extremely close to my host family, and even 2 years later I talk to them at least once a week. Last year I returned to Tokyo and spent another month with them! (I'm telling you guys MAKE FRIENDS IN JAPAN it saves you LOADS of money because you can visit them and usually stay and visit for free and not pay ridiculous amounts of money for
A hotel). 

Alright so I went to school in Tokyo, but I lived in an adorable little town called makuharihongo in Chiba. Everyday I had to take an hour train ride (which I strangely miss) to school. I LOVE Chiba, I don't think just anyone will like Chiba though, it's not a tourist location aside from Tokyo Disneyland is located there, it's Just authentically "Japanese" and it allowed me to  experience Japanese culture without all the gaijin (foreigners) around and about. I also lived in another small town called Shiga, it was about an hour from Kyoto. Not going to lie... I HATED it. It was too rural for me. My house was surrounded by rice fields with not much to explore after a month. Kyoto was okay, but it is a lot of sightseeing and not much to actually do. I went to Osaka twice and enjoyed it, I seem to quite like the city atmosphere since I adored Tokyo so much. 

The place that I loved the most was probably my trip to Hakone... It was so breathtakingly beautiful. I got to experience a true Japanese hot spring and it was amazing. I also had the opportunity to go to some really awesome museums like the Hakone open air museum and the Venetian glass museum. I actually might just do an entire post on my trip to Hakone and add bunches of pictures. Anywho, it's a wonderful place to visit just 2 hours
Away from Tokyo.  

Alright, here is my probably very shitty first blog post... I hope to get the hang of it soon. I plan on posting a ton of pictures from my past trips and some good travel advice. I had to learn the hard way on some things. But to whoever reads this, if you have any questions feel free to ask! Thanks for reading! (: