A Broad Side - What to Sneak In

Okay please do not read the title and believe that I want you to sneak drugs in. Remember that you represent your home institution and doing something like that can get that school or even country banned from going to the location you are at. DO NOT SNEAK DRUGS IN.

Also you aren't really sneaking anything, it's just fun to call it that.

Disclaimer [check]

What to sneak in! After you have scoped out the country you plan to infiltrate there are some key essentials you will want to bring in with you so your mission can have the highest success rate.

As always communication with the home base is the utmost essential thing you need and what better way to accomplish that than your super high-tech spy computer. Able to make phone calls to home through google voice and utilize the all-powerful internet to find out any information you could possibly need. With this piece of tech you will never be bored as there are infinite possibilities on the web, just ask your local hacker.

Something important to keep in mind is that the target country may nor use the same technology as us so you will also need to make sure your tech is compatible with theirs. How terrible would it be if you get there and find out that your spy computer cannot get plugged into their outlet? Even countries that are "compatible" still share many differences. Japan, although compatible with the U.S. actually forsakes that silly ground hole and thinker/wide end on the plug. Make sure the adapter you bring allows you to adapt to even the harshest of conditions.

While on the subject of your spy computer's compatibility, you may want to consider picking up a VPN or proxy so you can enjoy the internet of your home country. There are a few companies that sadly do not allow you to use proxies, but as you are a super-secret spy you shouldn't be spending your time on Netflix anyways. (they work locally in most countries anyways.) there are both paid and free proxy services, while free ones are not always very reliable there paid ones are not typically very expensive. Also if you are an aspiring hacker needing to hide your location Tor may be how you want to browse.

Enough with the tech, now to consider your wardrobe. In order to help you blend in I recommend bringing several shirts that allow you to look different quite often, even though you have very few with you. Pants do not matter as much but you should bring enough that you can rotate your clothes out, or you will wear them out. A smaller wardrobe means that you wear the same things more often and actually wear the clothes out faster. A good spy can set up their wardrobe in a way the makes it seem like they have tons of clothes or at least hides that they are wearing the same things over and over, while only having a limited amount of options. Remember it doesn’t take very many clothes to fill up your suitcase and if you do where will you put your high tech gear?

Another important thing is to know how to properly stave off the locals. Sometimes it can be with your awesome looks, but some situations call for more crafty tricks. A good way is to shower them with cheap gifts such as postcards from where you came from. With this light weight and clever distraction you can show pictures from home and give presents they will enjoy all while saving luggage space and money.

Another powerful tool you need is your spy watch, able to track time at home and in the target country. Remember it never hurts to be informed, and when you need to make those phone calls back to home base you would best not wake them up at odd hours. HQ gets really grumpy when you do that. This is lightweight and able to travel in carry-on. Small, simple, but the enemy won't ever know its true purpose.

Worried that you may not have the entertainment you need? The internet just isn't good enough? Well there is a solution for that. Obviously you can rip CDs to your computer, but with software such as DVD Decrypter you can bring copies of your DVDs too. PSP Video 9 can then convert them to mp4s for saving even more space. Also services such as Steam allow you to download lots of games onto your hard drive and play them offline. Do not bring the disks for these things though, as they are quite heavy. If you need space grab a portable external hard drive. Once your data is safely stored you can travel without fear of boredom. Make sure you password protect it though so the enemy cannot steal it and access your information.

Toiletries can become a must depending on where you go. You may be surprised at what is common place in a country. Some countries may prefer spray on deodorants instead of stick and if you prefer stick then you may not find it. Some other countries dislike perfume, so you also may want to research it first. Remember to bring the things that you need not just really want. A toothbrush is a need, a hair dryer is not (and is really heavy for travel, just buy one there if you actually "need" it)

Your important documents scanned and saved as files on a secret hidden file or drive. Medical, travel, and other documents can become very necessary or if you lose things like your passport having a scanned backup could save you a whole lot of grief. Try not to bring paper copies as they will take up space and weight. Besides a passworded flash drive in your hand or pocket is a lot safer than a bunch of papers in a suitcase. If you bring paper it should be money, because not everywhere takes a card.

Finally we encourage you to bring along your spy camera. One with good photographic and videographic capabilities. You never know when you will want to document something, blog, vlog, or otherwise share your amazing experience with your fellow compatriots on the web. We know it is harder for you younger spies to resist the Facebook and YouTube, so if you are going to access them at least have good quality work to show for it. If you want to have a lightweight one, I recommend a mirrorless, but anything that has both video and picture capabilities is just fine.

Good luck on your mission. If you succeed you will be a hero.

A Broad Side - Getting the Green

Set the scene

You are from a low income family and they could barely send you to college. No! you are having to pay your own way, on student loans, a job, and federal grants. Now you want to study abroad, but alas you deem it impossible for you because you can barely afford school as is.

Feel like this? I sure did. I was working full time, a full time student, very limited support from family (sometimes getting me food or fixing my ancient car) and most of the time I didn't actually know if my bills were getting paid. How could I afford to study abroad?

First I want to tell you about this amazing thing call the federal Pell grant (assuming you do not have it already) which if you fall under a certain income bracket you can receive to help pay for college. If not for this grant I could not afford to go. If you have never heard of this I recommend going to your financial aid office and inquiring about how you can get it. Don't worry I'll wait.

So have you gotten it? Not that hard was it? Now for students that are poor enough that they need to use this grant, you are probably still thinking "how can I afford to study abroad?" Do not worry I'm about to get to that too. For those eligible to receive the Pell grant there is a scholarship you are also now eligible to receive. The Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship. Here is their site btw http://www.iie.org/Programs/Gilman-Scholarship-Program

This scholarship can be really competitive so be aware that you will need to be compelling when you apply but know that it is well worth it. Normal applicants who receive the scholarship can receive up to $5,000, while those who are studying a critical language in its native country can receive up to $8,000. Critical languages according to their site include: Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bangla, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Swahili, Turkish, and Urdu. I would assume that because they use the word "include" that there may be more. Now before I received the scholarship and was still in the application stage I did see a chart that said about 50% of people who apply for East-Asian countries get the scholarship and since I was also studying Japanese in Japan and it is a critical language I'm thinking that may have given me a decent chance of getting it but do not let this discourage you. Even if you aren't studying a language and are wanting to go to England please try and apply. If you do not try the only one missing out on a life changing experience is you. Also even if you are applying in a critical language the odds of getting the full $8,000 is actually quite low. In the year I studied abroad 2015-2016 over 2,800 scholarships of up to $5,000 were given out, only 70 people received $8,000 and I was not one.

You may now be wondering "who can get this scholarship?" well they tell you that on their site too. http://www.iie.org/en/Programs/Gilman-Scholarship-Program/About-the-Program/Eligibility#Eligibility You need to be a U.S. citizen, an undergraduate at an accredited university, receive that awesome Pell grant I mentioned above, have already applied to your study abroad program, and not be studying in a country that is under a travel warning issued by the U.S. The last requirement is that you cannot have already received this scholarship, but I'll just assume you haven't yet.

I see that look. Now you are thinking that there must be a big catch. Why else would they just give us poor people such a nice scholarship? What do they want from us? Get this! They want us to be better people. On the about the program page it says "The Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program offers grants for U.S. citizen undergraduate students of limited financial means to pursue academic studies or credit-bearing, career-oriented internships abroad. Such international exchange is intended to better prepare U.S. students to assume significant roles in an increasingly global economy and interdependent world." 素敵だね。What do they want in return? They want you to encourage others to study abroad and if they can't afford it spread the word about their scholarship.

Pumped yet? Okay now wait a sec I'm not finished.  When you apply you will have to write a paper about why you should get the scholarship and another about what you will do when you get back to help encourage study abroad. This second one was a little hard for me. Gilman allows  you to decide how you want to encourage it as part of your follow-on-service-project. You can do just about anything here. Many people write blogs, make videos, help out at their local study abroad fair and many others. There are many things you can do and the more mediums you can think of the more helpful you will be to others that want to study abroad. I have personally found word of mouth to be more successful in getting people to apply, but that doesn’t mean it is the only way. The only limiter is your imagination.

Enough about Gilman. Although an impressive scholarship what if you are concerned it is not enough. Well there is something that may have never crossed your mind. Most other countries have scholarships and grants that you are eligible to get as well. Something else to remember is that a lot of other countries feel that college should not be this expensive thing for people to go to, and some even let you go for free. Therefore there are often some really good scholarships you can obtain while abroad that will help out a lot. I personally received the JASSO, while in Japan, and if it was not for both the Gilman and JASSO I would not have had the funds to study abroad. I also got more from JASSO than from Gilman. Surprising no one though, the cost of living in Tokyo is really high so if I had only gotten one I would have been underfunded. There are also many more scholarships you can apply for, that do not necessarily give large amounts but when combined you could easily have more than enough. So search for them and apply.

Get out there and explore

A Broad Side - Top 10 Preparations part 2

So last time we talked about what you needed to do to prepare for studying abroad. So far I said you should get your passport, plan what school you need to go to, start saving, ensure you pre-order things you want to bring, and set-up ways to communicate back home. Now we will start covering the last five things I think you should do to prepare for studying abroad.

Number 6

Okay now if you are a guy please don’t run away. The next thing on my list is… clothing. Still there? Okay the hard part for you guys is over. Now it is the girls I'll have to not scare off. Your wardrobe is going to be really small. You are going to want to set up a few outfits that can be mixed and matched to create several more outfits. Now before you start freaking out, it gets worse. Okay well actually just worse for the girls, you guys will be totally fine. If you have really bright and obvious colors people will notice when you start wearing the same thing again a lot sooner. Also you may want to limit the shoes you bring to 2. also depending on the country you may want easy to put on and take off shoes. I know in Japan I was always taking off my shoes, and not just at houses but other places too. Church, bath houses, etc. so make sure they come on and off easily or else you may go mad. For those wanting to absolutely have that larger wardrobe you have two choices. You will need to either but the clothes in country and leave them before you come back, or pay a lot of money to ship them or have extra luggage. Suit cases cannot go over 50lbs/23kg without adding an additional charge, and the suitcase's weight is included in this. Just know it adds up quick.

Shichiban

Our list is starting to get long, so here is your first easy item. Complete everything early. Sounds easy, but I bet many of you will struggle with this one. I know I did. It may sound obvious, but the main reason is that there will be several opportunities that will show up that you did not know about. You may find out later and it may change how you need to plan your trip, or if you have to spend money on something you were not expecting. Some of these opportunities may rely on you already having more things prepared. So when you can knock out tasks, paperwork, and preparation details early. Some examples of things that I needed to be pre-prepared for included; having passports for scholarships, having money for the other country's national insurance, signing up for the international student identification card (ISIC - https://www.isic.org/) having a ton of passport photoes (not just for passports surprisingly), international driver's licence (must be done in home country, and cannot be done in other country) and many more things. There will be a lot of things like this so take care of them before you get overwhelmed by the more that will come.

8

So months have gone by and you have worked out almost everything. Now you are working hard at just keeping the anxiety away before the trip. Since by now you have gotten most of your paperwork prepared, maybe you are even close enough that you have your visa too. You should make copies of everything. How you keep these is up to you; concealed flash drive, cloud storage, hidden folder. Any way you do it is fine, but you need backup copies of all of your important documents. Depending on if you have medical conditions this may include copies of these files as well. If anything happens to you there may be a need to have these, so you should be prepared by ensuring you make copies. Before I went to Japan, tragedy almost struck. A lost wallet containing a passport and all of the cash (Japanese yen)  I had to start the trip was almost never seen again. Everything turned out alright, but it can happen and if it does you need to have a way to fix it. Also back on the medical documents, turns out I needed some while I was there. Fortunately I'm like file crazy and had it, but I did not even think I was going to need it and just had it in case of emergency… I am so happy that I did.

九

Crunch time. It's the night before your plane leaves (and it leaves early in the morning) You've collected everything you think you will need and are now test loading it into your luggage at 10:00pm and you find out that it is too heavy and doesn’t even all fit in the two suitcases you have. This was me before I left. I ended up staying up somewhere between 2-4 am trying to get everything packed in time for my flight at 9am. Needless to say I slept well on the flight (actually I didn't) Trying to get all of that ready was crazy though, and for all of my preparedness I did not realize figuring out what to leave behind was going to be so hard. All of this to say DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE! Try packing your suitcase several times before hand. Remember that you may get new things you want to bring, and you may not need everything you have. If you are leaving in winter then sure wear some winter gear (on your body and on the plane as it saves space) but if not, even if it is fall don't try and bring that. If you really need it later buy it on amazon. They are almost everywhere and can sometimes surprise you where they can deliver. If you love something a whole lot do not bring it. Stuff happens, things break, get lost, and when you have gathered more things in that country that you absolutely want to bring back something else will not come back. So when you do these trial packings of your suitcases make sure to leave space as well. Or else you may end up like me before I came home from Japan, trying to decide if I should leave the amazing tea set I got there or the PS3 I brought with me. I kept both don't worry. I just got rid of all my clothes, most of which I liked.

Number 10

The final thing you should do to prepare is to remember you are going to a new country. There are going to be different rules, laws, people, ways of thinking and people will perceive things differently.  You may have differences of opinion and things may be difficult because others have a different background from you. This will happen, and there is no helping it. Take the time to learn. Learn how they think, and realize that the laws that govern you have shaped you in some ways to be who you are while theirs have done the same to them. Remember you are also a representative of your home country and college. When you do things, wherever you go people will use you to judge how they think and perceive where you are from. Also your actions can have larger ramifications than you think. Acting up could easily make it so your college is no longer able to study abroad there. It sounds like it may be a bit extreme based off of your actions alone, but this has happened before so just remember who you represent. On both of these points I have many examples, but there are far too many to isolate and share, besides that is part of the experience you are leaving to enjoy anyways. I can't teach it.

Well this concludes my top ten ways to prepare for study abroad. If you liked it please subscribe. If not then let me know what you think in the comments below. Do you have things you think are more important for preparing for study abroad? Tell me what they are.

A Broad Side - Top 10 Preparations part 1

So what do you need to before you study abroad?

Studying abroad can be difficult because you are typically planning a trip where you leave your family and everyone you know along with most of your possessions behind… well unless something terribly tragic happened to you and you have neither family nor possessions…

Before trying to take on this long and dangerous venture you should at least be able to prepare for it so you survival chances can go up. Thus here is my list of things you need to do to prepare for feeling the wrath of the league… no! stupid copyright. the list of things you need to do to prepare for studying abroad.

Numba wan

You're at school and this person comes to your class and tells you about thing interesting experience that comes with going to another country… somehow they intrigue you and you want to go. You think about it and decide you might do it a year from now. So that means you don't have to worry about preparing now doesn't it? それは違うんです。 Although you may think you don't have to do anything you actually need to start… NOW. Many of the documents required to go abroad can take months to complete and most will need to be completed months before you even study abroad, or even before you are considered for study abroad. *deep breath* So the first on my list of things to do to prepare for study abroad is get your passport. Passports at the very fastest take 2-6 weeks to get, BUT this service costs a lot more. In fact unless there is an emergency and you have a good reason to apply for a passport late, the very fastest is 6 weeks, and that is still the expediated time frame (their website say less than 6 weeks but that’s all)  cheapest expediting fees are like $60 so I wouldn’t recommend it. If you get it the routine way they say it takes more than 6 weeks. To be totally honest mine got to me faster than this, but the real reason I stress the importance of it is because some study abroad programs wont even consider you if you do not have this already, and all of them require you get it before are 100% cleared to come (plus you need it to get your visa)

Noomber twoo

Learn about the different programs your school has and what is required to go to them. And actually research it! Just hearing from someone else "oh you should go here" sounds great and convinces many people they should go to wherever that is but please, Puleeze do not do this. You need to figure out what you want out of this experience and then select the location that best suits your needs. Want to not push your graduation back? Find a school that has courses you need for graduation. Care about understanding what you are learning? Find a school that has more classes in your native tongue (I would assume English if you are understanding all of the linguistic jokes I's be makin', it's not like you are a linguist right. Right?) want to just have fun and party all the time? Go to UTK where they butt chug (shame you shouldn't bring that up. Plus that isn't study abroad) Regardless you need to research about the school. If the thought of researching for study abroad sounds like it is a lot of work, then don't, but when the place you picked causes you problems don't come crying to me. No really. I do not want to deal with a teary eyed you… oh the salty messiness. Ugh. But honestly, most schools give credits… is that right? Credits? Credit? I think it's usually 1. okay most schools give a credit for studying abroad anyway, so at least put a credit's (that sounds plural but it is not) worth of work in to preparing for it.

三番目

So now you have your passport to pass the ports and programed your program in your plans, and are about ready to hit this guy making corny jokes. Now what do you do? There are still like 10 months before this whole study abroad thing anyways. Well aside from the fact that many programs have really early sign-ups so you should already be applying to the one you want, you also are starting to notice that they want you to have this thing called money… and they want you to have a lot of it. Typically they want you to have enough to cover your living expenses for the whole year. Because everyone has that laying around. Except for that person earlier who has no family nor possessions, they have nothing. If you happen to be like them and have no money lying around then I'm sorry but you are screwed… I hope you really didn’t believe me. In all actuality there are several ways to get money for studying abroad. Many are very helpful and useful, but you can't rely on all of them to be in your bank account by the time your program requires it. If there is any way to start saving now you should do it. Now there are several ways to help with the money, but I'll talk about them in another post. Just know that even the projected amounts are just living expenses and you will almost undoubtable need more.

Number 4

For those now on a limited budget (good for you saving for this trip) you may want to start planning the things you will need to buy before you go. This is a scary step and often you find you did it wrong if you wait until the last second to do it. This one is also hard enough that I will actually make another post about "what to sneak in" but just know that you should try and get things that you need to order, sooner rather than later. Like that really nice camera lens so I could record myself talking about Japan. Only took 4 weeks to get to me. So glad I didn't wait until a week before leaving to try and get that one, otherwise I would be typing all of these posts…

#5

Ensure you have amenities to communicate with family, and try to have a cost effective way to do so. I would say the basic thing to do is make sure you have internet where you are going. If you are staying in dorms at the school you are studying abroad at then having internet is probably a given, but how do you contact your family. If you want to video call your family there are several free services you can use such as skype. Phone services are a little different. If you want to just bring your own phone from home to a different country then you may be a little surprised to find they have big up-charges for international calls. And not small up-charges either. For me I found the cheapest way for me to phone family was to use google voice, a free service, to make calls to my family. Before I left the country I set up a permanent phone number attached to my Gmail account which I can make calls from straight from Gmail. Then just for international calls I added $10 to my account so that I could make international calls. Turns out that it wasn't necessary. Calls to my family did not count as international because I set up a phone number that was local for them, the only calls that cost me anything were the ones to people in Japan. By the way, after a year in Japan I still have more than $7 left from that initial $10. there are many other ways to do things just like this so go out and research them. You may want to buy a watch that can have world time separate though so you don’t call home at 2:00 in the morning though.

Well this post has gotten a bit long. Want to see the rest of my top ten? Subscribe! also feel free to leave a comment down below. I would love to hear from you.

Stir-Fried Tango - A Broad Side - Intro

Welcome Back to the Stir-Fried Tango

So if you were expecting the next blog on our trip around Kansai... you will be waiting another few days. That series will have it's next update on Monday. Today I will be starting my new series A Broad Side, and guess what? My first post has a video!

Hope you guess enjoyed that. I'm wanting to get better at making videos so I will be practicing a lot. Don't worry! I still plan on keeping this blog, and in fact you will probably get special stuff because you not only get to see videos I put up but also the flavorful text up put up with it.

So don't despair!