Pre-Tokyo Angst...

Well, I’m back after a long, tough spring semester in Philadelphia, and I CAN’T WAIT to get over to Tokyo for the summer. Here’s a summary of what’s happened this semester:

• First and foremost, Sarah and I are doing great – she has been working on Capitol Hill for a congressman and living with her family in Vienna, Virginia, and we’ve been taking turns traveling back and forth between Virginia and Philly almost every weekend this spring via the Chinatown Bus. She will be meeting me in Tokyo at the end of July and we’ll be traveling together for about a month through parts of China, India, Thailand and Cambodia. Yes, we are absolutely freaking out with excitement about this trip. Also, my family is coming to meet Sarah’s family in about a month, setting the stage for a possible “Meet the Fockers”-style debacle, but I’m sure it’s going to go really well.
• Afterwards, we’ve decided to move to Asia together as soon as we’ve found jobs over there, which is proving to be a huge, discouraging challenge so far, but we’re both working diligently to try to make it happen. Hong Kong is our first choice for location right now, but Shanghai, Bangkok and some other large Asian cities are on our collective radar as well. We’re also simultaneously looking for jobs in the States, just in case we can’t find anything overseas by the time we get back from the big trip.
• The flight home from Europe in December was a complete disaster, and as I now read my last blog entry, I should have realized that flying through five airports on my way home was a monumentally brainless idea. I ended up losing a suitcase for about 3 weeks (hello, new underwear!!!) and having to sleep at JFK for a night with 4,000ish Saudi Arabians who happened to be hanging out in the same terminal waiting for their early morning flight. Upon arrival in Florida, I had to borrow clothes to wear to my buddy’s wedding from three different people, none of whom are built remotely like me. However, I had a great time at the wedding, and I went on a cruise to Mexico with the entire Corbin clan shortly afterwards, which was an absolute blast.
• My roommates and I found a giant old house in the Northern Liberties neighborhood of Philadelphia, and we moved in just after classes began in January. The neighborhood is rough, but we’ve had a good time in our house, which is well over a century old, 3 stories tall and built over a barbershop; we threw a big Super Bowl party/barbecue (it was a first-time experience for lots of my classmates), and we have a rooftop terrace with a great view of the Philadelphia skyline and the Ben Franklin Bridge. Although we couldn’t get the Frenchmen to develop a taste for cheesesteaks or lite beer, they’ve become addicted to such American gourmet specialties as ramen noodles, Zatarain’s Cajun rice mixes, and 3-liter bottles of Big Fizz orange soda.
• This semester, we were joined by eight new classmates, all of whom spent last fall studying in Mumbai, India in a parallel “leg” of the IMBA program, and we’ve had a lot of fun getting to know them. However, our classes this semester have been awful – after getting used to the week-long, condensed semester system in Paris, a normal 4-month semester feels like an eternity, especially with lousy teachers, a tedious consulting practicum and repetitive presentations and projects.
• Fortunately, I’ve been lucky enough to get away from Philly a lot since I’ve been here. On top of traveling to DC every week or two, Sarah and I went back to my hometown of Fort Walton Beach, Florida for another friend’s wedding in January, and I went on yet another cruise to Mexico with about 20 of my college buddies for Spring Break in March. While the details of that trip must remain entirely confidential, you can take a wild guess as to how much fun I had…
• On my way back to Philly after the cruise, I had a chance to stop into Tampa with my Aunt Veronica and Uncle Harry Costello for a night and see James Carville (“The Rajin’ Cajun”) and his wife Mary Matalin speak for a Hillsborough County Bar Association benefit dinner, which was one of the highlights of my spring semester, along with another trip I took down to Tampa in May for Aunt Roni’s 50th birthday party. More recently, Sarah and I rented a car and took a hellish drive through the rain and traffic from DC to Boston to meet her grandparents and some of her aunts, uncles and cousins, which (other than the disgusting weather) was a really nice time.
• After yet another destructive visit from my buddy Josh McCormill, Sarah and I flew out to Cincinnati for Memorial Day weekend to see my best friend Ryan Kirk (affectionately nicknamed after an expletive) and some of Sarah’s old friends, and had an awesome time singing karaoke, drinking liters of beer at the Hofbrauhaus, and blowing things up, as usual. I figure that if Sarah hasn’t dumped me yet after witnessing firsthand last weekend’s debauchery and chaos, then I’m doing pretty well.

At the moment, I’m finally finishing up last semester’s ridiculous consulting practicum, beginning a new summer semester, furiously hunting for jobs, and getting pumped up for the big trip to Japan on July 2nd. Here’s my itinerary:

• July 2: Depart Washington, DC and arrive in Tokyo; live and study in Tokyo for the month of July at Temple University Japan
• July 30: Fly out of Tokyo and arrive in Shanghai, China for corporate tours
• August 2: Leave Shanghai and arrive in Beijing, China for corporate tours and a possible trip to the Great Wall of China
• August 5: Fly out of Beijing and stop through Bangkok, Thailand for 24 hours on our way to India, where we’ll spend a few days on the beach in Goa and a few days in Mumbai partying with a couple of our Indian classmates
• August 14: Depart Mumbai and head back to Bangkok, Thailand; we’ll stay in Bangkok for a couple of days, then stop through Cambodia for a day or two before we trek down to hang out with my cousin Chris Corbin, who works at a beach resort on Ko Samui island
• August 24: Depart Bangkok and head back to DC and the REAL WORLD…

That’s all for now from Philadelphia – I’ll be in touch when I arrive in Tokyo!