Daily Life: Study Abroad Orientation, A New Camera and Finals

There's less than one month of school left and I have to say -- I'm not ready. In the midst of midterms everyone thinks 'God, I can't wait for this to be over.' but now that I'm staring summer vacation in the face I realize I'm not ready.

My sophomore year was a drastic improvement from my life last year.

I struggled a lot during my freshman year, and I truly felt so much more free and happy during my second year in Albany. I made a lot of new friends, and lost some. I grew more as a person, and as always, my Japanese level took another spike up from what it was last year.

I also made some new friends recently, who have been nothing but kind to me. Vincent and I took a few photos, both on my Polaroid camera and my new one (I talk more about that below). Enjoy!

Vincent took this one. He has an amazing eye for photos, seriously.

School wise, everything is going to change, and it's going to change soon.

On Saturday, I have my Study Abroad Orientation for Waseda. At this point, I am still applying and have not yet officially been accepted by Waseda University, which means that I'll be attending this orientation with the possibility I might not even study abroad.

This has really been the most nerve wracking element of my entire semester, and it's always been the elephant in the room whenever a family member or friend brings up next year. I'll know by the end of next month what the ultimate decision is regarding my study abroad, and so I'll be praying as much as I can until then!

In preparation for my study abroad, and also just for my life in general, I bought a relatively inexpensive camera! It's the Sony A5000, and I've been messing around with it a bit lately trying to navigate all the settings. I've had a digital camera before, but this camera is leaps and bounds above the one I had, so there is a bit of a learning curve.

My goal is to record a lot more videos and post them here!