introduction

Hello all and very nice to meet you!

My name is Rachel and I am from Baltimore, Maryland. I live with my parents, older brother, cat, and fish. 

I was drawn to the gap year experience when I was faced with a challenging decision: go to a college that doesn't have exactly what I am looking for and transfer after reapplying next year, or take a year off to reapply and use my four years at a school that really suits me. Once the decision was made, I had to choose from all of the gap year programs available and what I would like to spend my year doing. Well, the thing I was most interested in was having time to live abroad before I go to college. I felt like that is the kind of experience you can only have at this point in my life without having to worry about a job or work for university. The second thing I was looking at for in a gap year program, was content I would enjoy and that would help prepare me for college. There were several sites with programs that were community-service based, but I knew that wasn't something I was totally into for an entire year. Others were focused on studying languages abroad, but not the languages I have been focusing on or will continue with in college. I compared and contrasted programs and decided that CIEE's language and culture programs were the best fit for me.

I hope that through this gap year I can achieve three main things:

1- I would like to improve my speaking, reading, and writing abilities in both Chinese and Japanese.

2- Make a lot of friends! Not only other gap year students, but also people living in the countries I am going to spend my time in. 

3- Enjoy myself. I do not expect this experience to be easy by any means, but I do want to have a good time. I like going to language class. I see life in another country as an extended class where I can use what I learn in the classroom and apply it. I want to go out of my comfort zone and experience things I can only see or do where I am. I want to come back home next year with a LOT of stories and memories I will have for the rest of my life.

The only thing I currently have on my bucket list for my time in Japan is to take a weekend and visit Osaka.