JET Program Status Notification

As most of you know, I’ve been waiting insanely anxiously to hear back about my JET status. Basically, I was waiting to be told if all my dreams were about to come true and all my hard work was paying off OR if my life was going to be put on hold for another year of minimum wage work in Kalamazoo. The JET results were said to be emailed out in early April, and other than that I had no real idea when I would hear. So as of April 1st I stalked my email like mad … and by April 6th I had my email permanently open and spent most of my time staring at it, waiting for something to appear. Tuesday, April 7th was no different and by 4:30pm I still had no word. At 4:33 I was forced to turn off my computer at work and walk home. Upon getting home I pretty much threw my things down by the door and went to turn my laptop on. After waiting for it to boot and logging in to my email … IT WAS THERE. It had arrived at 4:46pm while I was still walking home. “JET Program Status Notification” I didn’t waste a second opening, as nervous as I was, and the first thing I saw was “It is our great pleasure to inform you that you have successfully passed the second stage of the screening process for the 2009 Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program.” I read through the rest of the paragraph as quickly as possible to ensure myself that it was true. I made it! I was totally in! I wasn’t even an alternate, I was 100% IN and practically on my way! For the next few minutes I just kept repeating “Omigosh omigosh omigosh” and jumping around the apartment. I called my parent's house, but no one was home, so I went on to call all the members of my family one by one. I don’t think everyone knows about it yet … but I’m working on spreading the word! So, my new wait is to hear where I’ll be placed in Japan. I requested Shizuoka and Saitama but would be happy anywhere, I’m just so excited to go! We’ll be flying out of Detroit on August 1st and are planning a going away party sometime in late June/early July, so I’ll have more details about that later. I can’t believe this is all happening! Now I just have to do a million things to prepare to move to Asia in four months … oi!