Thanks for visiting my blog. Please feel free to contact me at thepandatravels@gmail.com with comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms, and/or questions. I look forward to hearing from you!
My real name is David Calica (as most of you probably already know seeing as you probably have to know me in order to find this blog). However, I will be posting about the travels of Sumiko the Panda (or if I show past travels, Lime the Panda). That's because this blog is about the travels of a panda.
Sumiko, like her older brother Lime, will be a traveling panda. She will accompany me on my 9-month study abroad in Japan. Seeing as I should probably write on my lengthy travels for academic and personal reasons, I might as well make it amusing and show some cute photos. Japan after all is probably the "kawaii" (cute) capital of the world.
I came up with this idea after the realization that Lime (who you can follow on Facebook under "Lime Calica") is more well-traveled than my family is. See, in my family's travel photo albums for the past 5 years, there are few pictures of us humans. Almost all of the pictures are of a panda, specifically Lime. It seems that panda pictures are more interesting than human pictures. Not that I blame anyone. I mean look at the photo of the Pikachu balloon in the NY Macy's parade. As much as I like Pokemon, I would rather follow pictures like this than a picture of a nerd going giddy over a jumbo balloon of a kids' show character (ie me). So blog about pandas it is.
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| Lime Likes Balloons! |
An introduction to Sumiko the Panda: she is originally from the Santa Ana Zoo and was named because I told my sister (keeper of the pandas) to give her a Japanese name. However, my sister wanted the name to be "sumimasen," which loosely translates to "excuse me" (ie the only non-food related Japanese word she knew). Since that's a bit too long, nor is it a name, I decided to go with Sumi and Ko (a typical ending for a Japanese girl's name), hence Sumiko.
For those playing at home who know hiragana (Japanese alphabet), すみこ、and those with familiarity with kanji, I decided to go with 済子 which is composed of the "sumi" in "sumimasen" (although it's usually written in kana not kanji) and "ko" for "child."
Her favorite food is Japanese apple flavored candy, shown in her picture.
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| Hi! I'm Sumiko the (Soon-to-be) Traveling Panda! |
So where will Sumiko go?
Well, starting December 18, 2012, she will be leaving from Southern California for a 9 month expedition. She will stop off in Taiwan for a few days, seeing Taipei and Tainan. She then will fly to Tokyo for Christmas, Wakayama for New Years, and finally Kyoto. She (and I) will be studying abroad in Kyoto for about 6 months at Doshisha University. We will be having a homestay. Then, for the summer we will move to Osaka.
We hope to show you what we learn, see, eat, and do. We have never been to Taiwan, Tokyo, Kyoto, or Osaka, so this will be a learning experience for all of us.
We hope you will join us for this experience. We are so excited to go abroad, and we hope to share it with you.
Hajimemashite! Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu!
(Nice to meet you! Please treat us nicely!)
-DC, Sumi
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