The Road to Hiroshima (Day 1, Part 1!)

Greetings from Hiroshima! Today was such an eventful and wonderful day that I can only highlight a portion of the day! I am fully back in swing of taking too many pictures, since I took 373! I guess I had a little jetlag, since I woke up around 4:45 am ready to go for the day! Since I had gone to bed around 9:30pm the night before, I felt great! My roommate, Tara, was in the same boat, so we had an awesome chat between 5 and 6am! And then I felt even greater after I ate one of these chocolate filled pastries! 

 Most of these pictures come from the drive to the Haneda Airport. We drove through Tokyo and here are many of the pictures I took!

 I love these apartment buildings!

 Golf is super popular in Japan, so we saw many driving ranges like this one!

 Towards the end of the trip, I will be going to the very top of that tower!!

 Check out the signs on the road! So glad I am not driving since I don't know what that means!

 We passed a very beautiful ferris wheel!

After this drive, we were inside the Haneda airport for our flight to Hiroshima.

 They have massage chairs at every gate! Our program coordinator took advantage of it!

These are from some interesting commercials we saw!

 The guy is dressed up like a termite and eating a donut! And the girls are wearing clothing costumes!

When we were in the air we got a great view of Tokyo! I am still so stunned that 12 million people live in one city!

 While we were flying, we came across a beautiful surprise! Mount Fuji!

Also, the flight attendants were super cute and sweet the whole time! Actually, everyone we interacted with were awesome people!

I am definitely ready for bed, so I will have to continue the rest later! Have a wonderful day!

Travels to Japan (both on the plane and into the future!)

Hello everyone! I am currently on the plane (well, by the time this is posted, I will have landed and be at the hotel!) and it is almost hour eleven out of twelve and a half! To be honest, the time has really flown by so far! Getting to the airport feels like forever ago! All of my travels so far have been very smooth, and it is definitely easy traveling in a big group! One really cool thing was that we were at the exact same gate where I was last year when I was going to Spain, so it was surreal that almost exactly one year later I was embarking on another journey, this time with a destination thousands of miles away from Spain.

The plane ride has been great for bonding with the other participants. While I knew a few of them before from the Environmental Student Council I am in through the Campus Honors Program or from random classes, it has been a blast getting to know them! We have already laughed a lot and I feel like we have gotten significantly closer very quickly! Everyone is really nice!

Airplane food has been really great so far actually! There served all of the vegetarian meals first, which was cool! (Especially since we are in the last row, and some of the other participants had to wait until the end.) Because I have a slight problem with taking too many pictures, I took pictures of both meals (you can see below)!

It is fun to follow along on the computer screen with where we are traveling! We took a route over Canada, Alaska, the Bering Sea, and then are currently cruising south towards Tokyo! I even took some pictures of when we were over Fairbanks, Alaska! These TV screens have been deluxe too, since we have access to a bunch of movies, including the Silver Linings Playbook, which I watched! (Although I will still watch it with you, Jake! J) There were even different TV shows you could watch, music you could listen too, and games you could play, like Tetris or Pac-Man. I even listened to some J Pop to prepare for the trip!

I already feel like I am sort of in Japan, as I have had a lot of green tea, and before each meal, they have brought us warm towels to clean our hands with.  Carrie (my plane buddy) and I also practiced our Japanese phrases and numbers!

Once we land, tonight is pretty relaxed, and then we will continue traveling to Hiroshima for the International Peace Conference over the next few days! I am super excited! Love you all and hope you are having a great day!

 Our airplane!

They gave us ice cream!!!!!

 Nothing like getting pumped up with some Japanese music!

 It was really fun to fly over Alaska! These were taken over the Fairbanks area!

BUT WAIT! There is more! Now I have landed in Japan! I think this is when a lot of the craziness really began to set in!

 Check out this awesome vending machine and some cool wall art in the airport!

 Alesia and I!

Narita is on the outskirts of Tokyo, which is quite a large city, since it houses 12 million people! What I thought was so cool to look at was the balance between nature and development/technology. Since we are close to the airport, there are lots of beautiful hotels, placed sporadically between these beautiful forests and hills! I kind of love it!

 The picture didn't turn out as well as I had hoped, but this is some of the crew! There are definitely some rascals on the trip, but in general everyone is super nice! We laughed so much today!!!

This dinner was amazing!! Clockwise, starting from the top left, a steamed cabbage salad, tempura veggies, stir-fried veggies (or cooked in a very yummy sauce), the best tofu I have ever had which was topped with chives, and some deliciously roasted eggplant!

And finally, for the happy picture of the day, check out the complimentary Japanese pajamas! These robes are very comfy! Also, bamboo slippers were provided but I am not wearing them in the picture!

I am quite tired and I will be going to bed! It is almost Friday morning here, so I will need my sleep before the upcoming activities! To all of you back home, happy Thursday and enjoy your day!

One day until Japan!

Hi guys! This will be my last blog post from the United States for a little while! I head out for Japan on Wednesday morning and could not be more excited. While the end of the school year was crazy and wonderful and I just moved back home yesterday, I feel my excitement growing tremendously as I continue to get closer to Wednesday! Over the next two weeks, we will be visiting Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Miyajima, Yanai, and Hiroshima. The program is through the Campus Honors Program on our campus. During the final weeks of the school year, we have had a couple meetings with the group and everyone is very nice! I know a few people who participated in the same program before and really loved it as well.

I'm not really sure of what to expect since I haven't yet visited Asia, but I have done some research and learned a lot during the pre-trip meetings. I find it fascinating how such a large number of people live in such a small space, given the fact that the country is so mountainous and since they must import the majority of what they consume. I also can't wait to learn about such a rich culture and history, coupled with learning about a nation thriving technologically and developmentally. I have a feeling the visit to Hiroshima will be extra interesting to me, as I hope to teach social studies in the future, and this is a place where United States foreign policy really devastated this city, so I will look forward to learning the Japanese perspective and representation of the area, and to share these perspectives with my future students, so they can think more critically, but also globally when we discuss World War II and related topics.  I am very excited to try to learn some of the language, since it has a different feel to me than English and Spanish, and is something I don't have any background knowledge about! Finally, I can't wait to really connect with people there, such as my host family in Yanai and the students we will be interacting with at Kinki University.

Similarly to what I did last summer in Spain and Italy, I hope to use this blog as a travel log, as a fun way to document my journey and easily share it with anyone who is interested. I will share both text and a lot of photos as often as I am able, given internet availability! Following my trip, I will probably make a video slideshow or catch up on posts that I haven't done yet! And as always, thanks for reading! :)

Teens Turning Green Road Tour

Hello everyone! In April, I worked with the organization Teens Turning Green to bring their Conscious College Road Tour to the University of Illinois. It was a two day event that included our Conscious Information Stations, in which we distributed samples of many green products and educational materials, while teaching students about ways to live more sustainably and consciously. The evening program consisted of a Town Hall Meeting, in which we hosted a dinner, speech about coal divestment and student action, and breakout sessions to discuss the Freshman Green 15 and how it would work at the University of Illinois.

During the two days, we reached out to around 200 people and had many meaningful conversations! It was a great way to advertise the Sustainability Living Learning Community and Project Green Challenge, the 30 day challenge I participated in this past October. The goal of the Road Tour was to reach out to a large audience and plant seeds of curiosity in students to help them transition their lives from conventional to conscious, and I believe we accomplished this! Below you will find pictures from the two day adventure!

This is a picture of Judi, the founder of Teens Turning Green, and I, in front of the Common Ground Food Co-op, Urbana's awesome green grocer!

 We had lunch at the Common Ground Food Co-op, and I got this yummy avocado grilled cheese on olive bread with a mango drink with chia seeds!

The following pictures are from the set-up of the Conscious Information Station. We had several wonderful volunteers help us set-up both days and help throughout the day by engaging students.

 Teens Turning Green has many amazing sponsors that donated tons of awesome freebies, included Organic Numi Teas, Guayaki Tea, Ecojot and Kerjiwal 100% post consumer recycled paper notebooks, and so much more!

 Here is a picture of some of the students that visited our station!

 Our amazing volunteers!

The event was a lot of fun and hopefully these pictures give you a little taste into the activities of the Road Tour! For more information, visit teensturninggreen.org!