I really am leaving. 🙂

To save everyone time…and more importantly to spew my opinion on those willing to listen:

Tips for Leaving your life behind for an extended stay overseas.

You can get currency exchanged at any international airport that doesn’t suck.  (Tulsa Sucks)  Seriously.  Just walk in there with an envelop with several thousand dollars USD in it and they will stay more chill than greek pudding.  It feels like a drug deal and most certainly looks like one, but not to worry your frazzled curls.  This will be the most successful devious exchange you will ever be a part of.  If you call ahead..you have an even greater chance of success.

Don’t be stupid when you pack.  While I deliberated for over a week on whether or not my Full-body chicken suit was a viable travel accessory, you have to let common sense win out in the end.  In the end I let that suit flee the coop into the arms of a worthy wielder of its feathery goodness.  Use it well.  Seriously though.  Look at every item you are going to pack…and ask yourself…more than twice…”Am I ACTUALLY going to wear this?”  If the answer makes you hesitate in the slightest…through it at your grandma, you don’t need it.  Trust me.  If you are a woman who is below 5’6″ you don’t even need to take but a carry-on, your country of choice will have clothes that fit you.  Me on the otherhand…not so lucky.  I, the equivalent of a Japanese Hagrid, will not be able to find so much as a pajama onesie that will fit my frame in the land of the small and dainty.  Maybe I can start a belly hanging out trend.  In which case, I would be in luck methinks.

Until I can pull that off, here is what I am taking:

12 pairs of socks.

5 pairs of bluejeans

20 t-shirts

8 dress shirts

10 button up shirts

10 pair of underwear.

4 Dress vests

9 ties (I love my accessories)

8 Pairs of slacks

5 pairs of shoes

5 undershirts

2 swimtrunks

My computer and my Xbox (to keep in touch, haha)

Sounds like the 12 days of christmas a twenty three year old packs into his suitcase.

You don’t need nearly as much as you think you do.  Get rid of it. Trust me.  It is a wonderful feeling being able to pack your entire life into 3 bags and a man purse.

You don’t need shaving cream…the world appreciates a healthy beard.  No need to worry about toothpaste…the rest of the world isn’t FROM THE PAST.   And don’t take medication.  Get healthy before you go.  No one likes a pill popper or a prescription patty.  Just do push-ups and scream until all illness and lack of immunity leaves your body.  Problem solved.

If you are just getting out of college…SELL ALL YOUR STUFF.  Do you really want to hold onto that sofa you found in an alley?  Have an unbearable urge to store all those mismatched plates your extended family didn’t want?  You can buy a new bed when you come back…that one is probably pretty nasty, is it not?

Everyone kept asking me, “why are you getting rid of everything, Brocy?  Aren’t you gonna need it when you come back??”

….No, I will not need the hodge-podge accessories of  a long busted Magic Bullet.  I don’t care for the bargain sheets with a thread count of burlap.  And no, I don’t much care for the giant stuffed gorilla that Matt left and that judges me when I eat a jar of peanut butter at 3 oclock in the morning.

You can buy new things…Material things are transient.  I miss nothing of what I had in the physical sense.  Not a piece of furniture or the clothes that didn’t make the cut.  You won’t either.  That is the consumer in you that is holding tight onto an idea you will never need.  Things are nice, as long as they remain just that….things.  It feels wonderful when you realize that.  Even if you aren’t leaving the country…Take a look around…How much of that stuff do you need?  And how much of it do you really actually WANT. Search me, but I think your answer will be a lot less than you realize.

It took me 5 years to accumulate my life. and less than two weeks to fit it into the trunk of a car.

Two words….Good Will.

Wonderful place, that.

Learn the language.  Pretty obvious.  I know how to read Japanese, all except kanji….but I have no idea what it means.  watashi wa Amerika jin desu.

Favorite new phrase: Mayotte Shimai mashita.  (I am lost)

MOST IMPORTANT THING:

Take a sense of humor.  If I just sit there and get upset whenever I get lost in Japan or when I don’t understand something or make a fool of myself….I am going to spend two years being pissed off about everything.  Because I am going to screw up, everyday most likely, and I know that.  I am going to get lost…a lot…and I know that. And I am going to make a VERY big fool of myself…and guess what…I KNOW THAT TOO.

So no worries.  Every second you spend worried is a second you could have spent laughing it off.  You ever notice how people who worry and people who don’t both seem to still be alive?  People who are care free for the most part don’t horrifically die because they weren’t “prepared” or weren’t scared.  They just chose to take a different approach to the sitiation, chose to accept the things they could not change and roll with it.  Isn’t that the ultimate goal really?  To live?

Who is doing a better job of it?

So focus on that.  I am going to go eat some Hawaiian food with my sister and say some more goodbyes to America.

Here is a picture of a panda.