Progress

All students have paid in full. We purchased the 14-days JR Pass which will arrive next week.

I received email from Seishin. Mr. Korachika is finalizing the program details. The schedule and host family list will be sent within a few days.

Ms. Slattery (NDSJ's VP of Human Resource and Administration) is preparing trip permission forms.

We will a mandatory trip information night after AP testing on Monday May 17 from 7pm to 8pm.

Free Cell Phone Rental by ANA (2010)

ANA (All Nippon Airways) provides free cell phone rental service to its customers. As we will fly ANA, we are qualified. [For details click here]

For our entire stay, the rental fee is free. The incoming calls are at no charge too.

Call Rate:

Domestic Calls (60 yen/30s)

International Calls (75 yen/30s)

SMS Messages

Domestic SMS (10.5 yen/msg)

International SMS (126 yen/msg)

Insurance (optional) 157.5/day

Experience shared by Blair

I received a long email from Blair's co-ordinator of the Japanese exchange program - Ms. Wulf. She has been to Seishin 4 times. Her experience is a great help for us. (Click the title to read the email.)

Meeting postponed

Sorry, I have to postpone the meeting on Thursday at lunch. I need to go to another meeting about course registration process with Ms. Tupaj-Farthing and Ms. Rolfson. They just scheduled it today.

Probably we can meet the week after the spirit week. I'll send out a notice next week.

Passport

Please check your passport. It must be valid at least 6 months beyond the day of your trip to Japan.

For passport application or renewal, please check:

http://travel.state.gov/passport/passport_1738.html

Flight Reservation

Flight reservation was made today. It will be on hold for 1 day. Tickets have to be purchased by midnight tomorrow.

Travel Dates Confirmed

Ms. Yoshida confirmed the dates today.

Facebook group

As suggested by Maddie, I created a group on Facebook for the students who are going to Japan this summer to communicate. It is a closed group, which means the members are by invitations only. All the posting can only be viewed by the members. Non-members can only see the group description.

We are going to have a lunch meeting next Thursday at M213. The purpose is to let the students know each other.

Payment Agreements

The payment agreements were given to the students on Monday February 22. The first payment is due March 31, and the second is due April 30. The payment agreements must be signed by the parents/Guardians and returned by Friday February 26; otherwise the student will lose her spot. We need this agreement form because we are going to book the flight as soon as the dates are confirmed.

Plan changed

Due to the high fare of UA's non-stop flight this year, we decided to stay one night at Narita. This change will save us $500 per person. We will take trains from Narita to Kurashiki the next day. It sounds fun, doesn't it?

I am still waiting for Seishin to confirm the dates.I hope the dates can be set as soon as possible, so we can book the flight. We are a group of 7 people and the dates are not flexible at all, we can't book it too late.

Application result sent

Application result was given to the applicants in homeroom today.

Received email response from Blair High School. They are thinking about leaving on June 7th too. They have 3 students going this year.