The Next Adventure?

It finally snowed today, and it's starting to accumulate and bend all the tree branches, but I'm not going to write about that because it's the same thing that happens every year as the earth tilts on it's axis.

I wrote a blog a few weeks ago about how I had no idea what I would be doing after I graduate, but after a few weeks of thinking, pondering, and considering, I have some slightly more solid plans. I still haven't actually lined anything up though, so it is all still just in the pondering stage. But here's what I've got so far:

Now until December 20, 2006 - Somehow manage to keep up with and do well in school and work without dying.

December 20, 2006 - Graduate from CU, move from Grandma's basement in Boulder to Ma's basement in Edwards. Live and work in the Edwards/Beaver Creek/Vail area, possibly driving the Beaver Creek shuttles, or maybe driving the Denver-Vail shuttle vans... It isn't exactly resume-enhancing work, but I love driving and I think I will like it. I might also keep doing part-time work for Infoture, but who knows about that.

April, 2007 - Ski season ends and so will my driving job. Raissa and Dad and I are talking about going on a trip to Europe together, maybe for a month or two.

June, 2007 - Get back from Europe, and probably/maybe go back to work at Chinese Summer Camp again from mid-june to mid/late-july.

July, 2007 - Just as summer camp ends, I might move to Japan for a year to teach English. This little option is totally out of left field, I realize that, so let me explain. Yesterday I was standing in the Humanities building waiting for my semantics class to start when I saw posted on the bulletin board a flyer for an informational meeting about JET (Japanese Exchange and Teaching Program). It is a program funded by the Japanese government to get English teachers to Japan (two different links: one from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan, and another from the Consulate General of Japan at Denver). It involves a year-long contract and approximately US$30,000 for the whole year. It sounded interesting, so I went to the meeting. Unfortunately I misread the flyer and I got there an hour after it started, and thus I only caught the last 10 minutes or so. But it still looks pretty interesting. So today in my linguistics class I asked a guy I know who studies Japanese and a Japanese girl what they know about it, and they both seemed to have pretty good impressions of it. Anyway, the application is due December 4, and I think I'm going to go ahead and apply for it. I think I'm totally qualified and they would be dumb not to accept me. I'm thinking that this would be a good way for me to learn some Japanese (which is safely on my list of ten that I want to learn before I'm fifty). It would also be good teaching experience, if only I thought I wanted to be a language teacher... Also, Japan is pretty expensive to just travel to, so this would be a much better way to see the country. And I'm pretty sure that living in a country for an extended period is almost always better than simply visiting anyway. Overall the whole thing looks like a pretty exciting and legitimate opportunity, and I guess I don't really have any other significantly better ideas for what to do. The timing is perfect too because Chinese summer camp should end around July 17th (or thereabouts) and I would leave for this thing on July 29th, I believe. Anyway, I would love to hear any opinions that you might have about this, both good or bad. Why should I do it? Why should I NOT do it?

So if I can actually follow through with this stuff, 2007 could turn out to be another good year for me.

Today's video: I was looking through my computer the other day at some of my own videos that I have taken and I found this short one that I took on the maglev train to the airport in Shanghai. As you can see, it was really fast. I think the top speed was somewhere around 430 kmh, which is almost 270 mph. Yeah, that's pretty fast. It was a neat train ride; totally worth the 50 kuai (that's about $6, or maybe it was 100 kuai which is still only $12... I can't remember)