Less Than 13 Hours till Takeoff!

ACK! What am I still doing up? I can't turn my brain off. Too much information to process, and re-process, and on and on.

We said goodbye to 5615 Phinney Ave N. today, our first apartment together and a place of many happy memories for us. Except for the mold problem. Really not going to miss that. . .

Tomorrow we get up around 7am or so, pack a few last minute toiletries, get our documents together, and bid Seattle a fond farewell.

Our first plane takes off around 1pm, then we arrive in Vancouver, BC around 2pm. Around 3pm we get on our Japan Air flight and 1o+hours later we arrive at Narita Int'l Airport! (1:30am-ish PST, 5:30 pm Saturday Japan time!!) Then we take a shuttle to the nearby Radisson hotel and either crash into bed or stay up for hours on end, depending on how we respond to jet lag and time zone issues.

Monday morning we go back to the airport, catch a bus, and 2 hours later arrive in Mito, where our company headquarters are located. We will stay in a small hotel there for several days.

Tuesday morning we begin training, and supposedly will meet a Board of Education, whose directors will ask us fairly superficial questions, and when we pass with flying colors, we might just finally find out what city/town we'll be living in for the next year!!!! We'll also meet 30 or so other ALTs (Asst. Language Teachers) who will all be from other english speaking countries - can't wait to see where they're all from! We may make some good friends that we can hook up with later on.

Wednesday - more training.
Thursday - Moving to our new apartment somewhere within the Kanto region of Japan???
the next Monday - our first day teaching in Japanese schools (we think...)

There's a lot going on for us in the next several days, but we'll try to post at least once from our hotel in Narita just to let everyone know we've landed safely.

Take care, and we hope you'll leave a comment to let us know how you're doing!!