Introduction

Well I guess I should introduce myself first. I'm Kyle :). I live in Miami Florida and im 17 years old. 

So anyway a while ago I decided I wanted to go to Japan this summer. Now at first i had decided i would use the program that my school/ city uses, which is a Miami Kagoshima sister city program the city puts together each year. Me and a bunch of my other friends had decided to go on this trip but ultimately it was cancelled. This was all right before December I believe. Anyway so i started to look around for other programs, and I found many really good looking ones. However many of these programs were very ... learning based. What I mean by that is that you go over there and basically focus on learning the language or doing school work. Now I wanted to go to school but i definitely didn't want that to be the main focus. So i came across YFU (youth for understanding) which had been very highly recommended by my teacher. It had Everything i was looking for, Stay with a family, go to school ( but not focus on learning but rather to learn and experience being a student to a lesser extent than the actual students), and a bit of touring. The thing that really impressed  me most was that it was 6 weeks with the family and 7 weeks in total, so i would be in Japan basically the majority of summer. 

So i decided at this point i would sign up for it. only a slight problem occurred. The Kagoshima trip opened back up. Now while the other trip appealed to me more I couldn't help want to be with my friends more.  So then after a week or so of not hearing anything from Kagoshima they finally call and say that they will cancel it again. Now this cancel reopen thing happened like 2 more times and I decided that this year it was really flip floppy and i didn't want to invest myself in that program if there was a chance it would just close again. At this point it was like 1 week until the YFU application was due. I can say pretty safely i was freaking out. I didn't think i was going to get into either one at all. My mom had been calling and talking to my Councillor for YFU (named Eric) for the past 2 weeks so i decided to screw the Kagoshima trip and just go with YFU. After i had sent in the application ( the freaking day before it was due >.<) i got another call from Kagoshima telling me it was reopened for good this time. But i told them i already had a program.

Now maybe it was my mom calling almost every day to talk to Eric ( not always about the trip or info but also about just random how was your day stuff), or maybe it was my letter and credentials, but 9 days after i sent the letter ( Thursday of my spring break) i got my acceptance letter :D!!! ( i later learned it was just the letter telling me i had a spot reserved but not necessarily accepted but i got the real one some time later). My heart nearly stopped when i saw it there in the mail. I really wasn't expected to get in, despite my moms telling me constantly that i would.

So that is basically it for the intro. sorry for the length it really didn't have to be that long, and unless i have a really awesome story while I'm there, i probably wont have a post this long again. To finish off i recently got my shirt and all the info booklets and right now I'm waiting on scholarship news to see how much i really need to pay and where and with whom i will be staying. Also waiting on may 16th for the pre-departure orientation in Deerfield for everyone in Florida. cant wait :D