*~Introduction: About the Author~*

Hello and welcome to my blog! My name is Michelle, and for my first post I would like to introduce a bit about myself. Well, where should I begin? I was born in Minnesota and raised in Arizona for most of my life. “Arizona?” you ask. Well, if the harsh cold up north was not bad enough, my parents figured that the intense heat would do the trick to balance our situation. In actuality, the weather in Arizona is not all that bad as you think, but that just might be because I adapted to the scorching heat of Arizona’s summer. Nah, I was sick of it too. This is one of the reasons why I wanted to leave Arizona as soon as I graduated from high school. The only reason we moved to Arizona was because my mom was familiar with the state. Since she visited there through an exchange program from Japan during high school, she knew it was a better place to live because I was frequently prone to get sick in Minnesota.

I have a very small family: my mom, my dad, my dog and me. My mom is Japanese and my dad is American. I am bilingual in Japanese and English.  Technically, I am trilingual with Latin, but unfortunately, I do not know how to “speak” the language. I can only translate ancient Latin texts though, which I guess is pretty cool. I learned to speak Japanese by living there for a couple of years when I was young, by attending school every Saturday and by visiting Japan every summer just to, again, attend school there even if it was over my summer break. I barely got any break growing up, but I have become thankful over the years. Without this experience, I would have never been able to communicate with my relatives in Japan and enjoy the culture.  

As for hobbies, there are many things that I like to do. Anything relating to music, I love it. From listening to singing music, dancing and playing music, you name it, I do them all on a daily basis. According to my mom, I started dancing when I was only two. I took tap and ballet when I was younger, but the one genre that lasted was jazz. It is not exactly what you would imagine. The style is called “jazz,” but we dance to pop music. I have danced for about ten years. In the fourth grade, I learned to play the violin. I played the violin through high school and I still play whenever I get the chance. When I do find the time, I do also like to play video games and draw. Of all these hobbies, I am currently obsessed with sleeping. Yes, it may sound tiring(ba dum chhh!), but I enjoy getting a good night’s sleep or a nap during the day.

           I’m currently a second year at UCSB and I aspire to double major in Microbiology and Japanese. In the future, I hope to be able to travel between Japan and the US as an immunologist and contribute in research through this field. 
           I hope this post has brought us closer. Please feel free to talk to me and/or leave comments below! Thank you for taking the time to read my blog, and I hope you’ll come back for more!

 これからも、よろしくお願いします！