Dear friends,
As I sit down to write my final journal entry for you all, I’m looking out my window at a quiet Kyoto street. The sun is setting behind the tiled rooftops, casting everything in a warm golden light. It’s hard to believe how quickly the time has passed. When I first started writing to you about my travels, I was still figuring everything out from how to get around the city, to how to read signs in kanji, how to order food and even how to do laundry in a machine that only spoke Japanese! Now, months later, I feel like I’ve grown in ways I never imagined, and I want to share a few last thoughts with you before I head home.
First and most importantly, I want you to know this: so much in life is possible if you just try and believe in yourself.
I know that might sound like something you'd see on a poster in your classroom, but it’s also something I’ve lived. When I applied for the Gilman Scholarship, a program that helps students like me study abroad, I wasn’t sure I’d get it. I had doubts. I worried that I wasn’t special enough, or that my reasons for wanting to go to Japan wouldn’t stand out. But I tried anyway.
