hisashiburi

久しぶり(re : Hisashiburi) which in Japanese literally means "after a long time".

That word probably best describes how i feel about my blog, I can't believe it has taken me this long to start writing in it again. 2012 is about to end and i have only posted 7 times, even though i do have a handful of drafts, but it doesn't count unless you actually publish them i guess, hehe :p

I have been really, really enjoying the past couple of months to the fullest. Many new exciting experiences, (and even feelings) that seemed to have happen all so sudden but yet will always have a special place in my memories. They were all priceless. Both the good and bad.

After coming back from Indonesia to spend my summer holiday back home, on the 26th of September me and 15 other people set off on a plane to Detroit.  I was lucky enough to get a chance to participate in the 12th International Student Summit (ISS) as one of the chairpersons. Every year TUA (my university) holds this event in our campus (the Setagaya campus) but this year for the very first time the ISS was held outside of Japan and was organised by two universities. This year it was held in Michigan State University in East Lansing.

The first few days were used to plan the whole ISS which will be held from the 30th of September until October the 5th. There were times that it was hard to get everyone on the same page, as for the people that have actually participated in ISS before were less than 10 in the total of the student committee of around 45 people. But everything seemed to fall in place and turn out really great. The 12th ISS was great. I gained so many new experiences, new friends, and of course new knowledge too. I felt so sad when it ended, that week of ISS just didn't seem enough.

The presenters presented so many great ideas. This year's theme was "Students Taking Action in Response to Energy Challenges in the Areas of Food, Agriculture and Environment." As energy issues has became a recent hot topic and will probably still be a hot topic in the future, through this ISS i saw how even though we should be worried, but it also made me realize that we still have a promising future. There are still many passionate people who care and want to make a difference with any small step possible. In the session i was charing, the area of food and community session, one of the topics that i found really interesting was about food miles.

Food miles is the distance the food travels from the farmer's field to the consumer's table; the higher the number of miles, the higher the environmental impact. Of course when we look at it this way we would want to emit as less food miles as possible (make the travel distance of the food as short as possible), however when we do that we are narrowing chances for other countries (mostly developing countries) to try getting better markets abroad. Of course like every other topics, food miles too has it's advantages and disadvantages, but the discussions we had about this topic were very intenses and exciting.

Anyway I could go on and on talking to you about all the exciting things during ISS, but what better way then to show you then through pictures ;)

This is our team; team Japan. These people are amazing and i love each and every one of them ♥

And this is my session group, food and community B2. We're the girls' power team! The one in the middle is Ashley, she was also the chairperson for our session. :)

the famous "Sparty" , the mascot for Michigan State University.

MSU's huge football field. It was such an honor to be able to come up to the VIP box, even the most MSU students themselves haven't been here. And the view was so beautiful, everyone say's Michigan is at it's best in autumn. 

we also got to visit Frankenmuth, Michigan's little German town.

Michigan State Capitol, not only was it pretty outside, but the inside was even better!

During my three weeks there I took pictures and videos up to 19 GB! Everything just had to be cherished, but even so, all those pictures could never be enough for me to relive this priceless experience. Michigan was such a beautiful place with really really friendly people, a place i would love to visit again someday. But til then I hope I can travel to other new and exciting places just as exciting as this one ♥   

Don't forget to keep on living to the fullest guys!

Bye ♥