<p>DD2 is due home Thursday. After staying home for a month she heads off to Japan! We have to see if we can visit her sometime next semester. The big things are getting her Visa and figuring out a cell phone.</p>
<p>S4 will be home Friday for 10 days and then is heading for New Zealand at the end of the month. He has his Visa (consulate mailed it home), and will be taking his cell phone. We have AT&T and turned on international roaming for $0. The $5.99 World Traveler option didn’t seem worth it as it only saves about $0.30/minute on calls. We plan to use Skype for most calls. Also, the text messaging packages didn’t seem worth it as we don’t message that much now (he does with his friends). All we expect is an occasional message saying he arrived safely or he’s now in whatever city. He can talk to his friends on Facebook. Data plans aren’t even being considered (to be done via wireless networks). </p>
<p>When S1 traveled, he found the cheapest way to call was to buy an international calling card in each country. We may go that way for long calls if Skype doesn’t work out.</p>
<p>One of my friends is going on that new zealand trip! hope your son has a great time 
Same to your daughter on the Japan trip Erin’s Dad, though I don’t know anyone on that trip.</p>
<p>Me, I’ve just got a month off and I’m heading back to the same old Portland :)</p>
<p>Well, S4 is on his way to New Zealand and will be spending New Year’s Eve on the plane. 11 of the group didn’t arrive and will be taking the Saturday flight.</p>
<p>Hi Erin’s Dad,</p>
<p>I was just wondering how DD2 is doing in Japan? Likes? Dislikes?</p>
<p>She loves it. We get to skype her about every other week and communicate by E-Mail at least weekly. The program she is in is more language based than the one to which she applied (all her classes are in Japanese). She has her own room but is matched up with a Japanese student learning English - she did say her Japanese is better than her friend’s English. </p>
<p>They have a nice set up for the students - a dorm like an apartment building. The landlady throws little events for the students - trying on kimonos, a dorm party, going off to sculpt their own bean paste desserts. She also travels downtown via the train and tours the temples, etc. Now DW and I are seeing if we can afford to go visit before she returns. It will be nice having our own interpreter!</p>
<p>Dislikes - she said they don’t have street signs on all the streets so it’s easy to get lost. I know her feet were hurting her from all the walking.</p>
<p>Sounds like your daughter is doing well. We had good communications with our son in New Zealand when they were staying in dorms at Victoria University at Wellington. We were able to skype weekly in addition to emails. Now, they are traveling around so contact is spotty, just an occasional email. The main way we find out what’s going on is through his Facebook page, when someone posts a picture/comment. </p>
<p>He is having the time of his life there and would like to go to school there. For what they’ve done, it’s been one of the most economical vacations if you just look at the extra cost beyond tuition. Being a biology/geology emphasis, there have been a lot of field trips that tourists would pay to go on. </p>
<p>Before he left, we talked about going down. He threatened to not tell us where he was if we did. I don’t think he wanted us there to cramp his style. He was planning on taking a side trip to Australia, but later decided it would be a trip by itself. So now he’s doing a week trip to Fiji after the semester is over, before he comes back.</p>
<p>Awesome. </p>
<p>Latest info from DD2 is that one teacher is putting the students through the ringer on workload. They had to go to the dean about it (teacher assigned a project, gave specifics weeks later after people had been doing research which invalidated all their work so far, caused a lot of late nights…). We’ll see how that works out. I recommended she forward the same info to L&C to see if they can push at that end.</p>
<p>DW and I are trying to get out to visit her after school in May before she returns. We’ll have our own translator!</p>