From the Midwest and Around the World

   When this is set to be published, I will have boarded the plane and will be about five hours into my flight to Japan.    I am currently in Detroit, sitting at my terminal and charging my laptop so that it has full power going into the 13 1/2 hour flight to Japan. Looking out the window, the plane which I will be boarding in about two hours is quite big. It has two floors (the second being 1st class only), and has ten seats in each row. I am seated in the middle of the three-seat row (no window seat), but I have economy comfort seating, so there is more foot room. In a few minutes, I will go walk up and down the terminal so as too stretch my legs and buy a snack or two for the flight. For lunch I had Chirashi sushi at a Japanese resteraunt here at the airport...it wasn't great, but it was food and I need long-lasting nourishment for this long flight.    I am really excited for this trip and am prepared to be totally immersed in the language and cul...

     Only two classes on the beautiful Wednesday...Religion and Japanese (both classes taught by representatives of the Asian continent). In Religion (Prophets), I found to my dismay that I had to manually copy perhaps 100+ pages (after the tenth copy, they all blur together) of articles that would be supplementary reading in addition to the text. A bit of my heart died with each fallen tree...and I now have a deeper understanding of "The Giving Tree." Despite this paper-wasting, the professor seems demanding (in a good way), funny (in a healthily irreverent way), and easy to understand (wonderful images and metaphors). Hopefully the rest of the semester will represent what the first day showed.      I am in fourth year college Japanese (at Calvin, it is JAPN-311). In comparison to last year, there is more of an emphasis on individual learning. While we learn grammar and vocab as a class, we also have individual "themes" on which we will work through durin...