The Eye of Patrick

Hello Everyone,

I have finally gotten around to starting this blog. It has been a long work in progress. I meant to have started it when I started the application procedure for the JET program. However, with school and other stuff I could not find the time. Now I am on my summer vacation so I decided to start.

I will spend this post just introducing myself and then the next post I will go into more detail about the JET program.

My name is Patrick and I was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I lived and grew up there until the age of 17. It was mid way through my 11^th year of high school that my family was relocated to Brazil due to my father’s work. It was in Brazil that my love for travel and new cultures emerged. Before Brazil, I had not lived in any other country, let alone travel to one. This was a great experience for me; I got to see Brazil, Argentina, Holland and England before my high school graduation.

After my high school graduation I would return to Canada to study at Trent University. Where I would study Business and International Development studies with an emphasis in International Political Economy. This may sound fancy, but in reality, it is just business and economics. It is while at Trent that I met many friends from around the world, this would include Japan. Therefore, when I was in my 2^nd year of studies I decided to look for opportunities to spend my 3^rd year abroad and I settled on Japan. The reason I chose Japan was that I felt that I would not have the same opportunity to visit Asia in the future. I mean I had lived in South America and had traveled part of Europe, so it was not going to be difficult to return. While Japan and Asia seemed so different and unique and I wanted to try it out. Therefore, I went and applied for the study abroad and I was accepted. I spent 2005-2006 in Japan on exchange at Kansai Gaidai University. If you want to read about my experience while at Kansai Gaidai you can look at two places, one being the sushicam forums and the other being www.livejournal.com/users/patrosoft. They both share the same stories, and it is better then me repeating them here.

I will stop there and in the next post I will talk about the JET program and the application process for other people interested in it.

Take care,

Patrick