So..... Let's see.......
Good morning from just a rather normal Tuesday in Japan. I have just recovered from a trip to Matsushima, a beautiful coast town just northeast of Sendai city with many beautiful islands and quite tasty oysters. Not going to say when I might be able to post photos, I keep on finding myself doing something new that keeps me from having the time to finish all the photos. I guess that is a good thing though!!!!
Well, American Thanksgiving is coming this Thursday, and I was just thinking about the year I have been having. Yesterday was Japan's Labor Thanksgiving Day, a name which to me is quite obscure. Is this day the equivalent of Labor Day back home, or Thanksgiving back home. Either ways, Thanksgiving is in the name, so I guess we should be thankful for something!
I guess I should be writing this to my fellow classmates back home at Drexel. Despite all of the problems Drexel can appear to give us every term without fail, Drexel has one of the best Study Abroad systems I know of. Among all of the universities of the classmates I have and am studying with while abroad, Drexel is one of only a few universities that allows you to be flexible with class scheduling until the scheduling deadline of the university I have studied at. And despite a seemingly illogical school calendar with four quarter terms that start and end at drastically different times than our friends at other universities, this schedule allows us to be better timed with the exchange timing of other universities abroad.
I guess what I am saying is that Drexel's pamplets telling us to "Go Away" and "Find Your Destination" is probably the most accurate description of the Study Abroad program I can think of. If you have the chance to travel, and want to travel, you absolutely have to apply to study abroad as a student of Drexel University. Despite all of the stress I might have incurred doing so, I have been able to visit three different countries in one year, and am so much better for it. I have been able to meet family I have not met in over 15 years and learn about 3 great cultures that have allowed me to get a better understanding of the world I live in.
So, TL;DR, I implore everyone to travel abroad while in college. Globalization and westernization is happening at a rate unmatched in history, and from my travels, I understand that we are not individual countries anymore. We interact with different cultures every day without knowing it, whether it is with what we eat, buy, or use, everything we have around us nowadays is a product of many different cultures and many different ideas, and the only way to understand this is to travel. So GO!