Two months, already?

Man, I'm really slippin' here with this blog huh? Well, a lot has happened in two months, so I'll just do little bits of things as they pop into my head.

The newbies are here, and I like them. Yay for having great replacements.

School festival was last weekend, it was a blast. The band concert in particular was great.

drinking party after the festival was also fantastic. talked with lots of people, had lots of fun. the after-party was also epic. Great times.

typhoon came through a couple of days ago at night. woke me up from the wind, but wasn't any worse than a storm. mainly because of the mountains breaking it up i think.

i'm almost done with battlestar galactica. probably my favorite show in terms of enjoyment ever.

i'm reading the wheel of time series, so far, awesome.

i'll be waking up early on saturday to watch the hawks play their night game. :D

i went to kanazawa a couple of weekends ago for the 'silver week' holidays with chad. it was a blast and we saw some great things; ninja-temple, 21st centurty contemporary art museum, and the famous japanese garden there.

i'm bummed harold, the american staying in iijima, is gone. we hit it off really well and liked a lot of the same things. it's a shame i only knew him for two weeks :P

made burgers a couple of nights ago, it was fantabulous. minus the part where i fell in the gutter walking to molly's car becuase it was pitch black outside of her apt.

all day meeting for english teacher's yesterday. it was horrible and i wish i could have snuck out, like some other teachers (american and japanese both) did.

kasuga seems really bummed at his new school. it makes me appreciate what i have in iijima.

i might try hiking a trail outside of iijima in the mountains this weekend. but we'll see. haha.

i randomly decided (after reading the last book), that splitting the harry potter book seven into 2 movies is actually great for everyone, in terms of making money and covering more of the epic story.

the brazilian restaurant in ina will be shutting down sometime in the next couple of months. I'm going to miss it dearly.

the chinese restaurant in iijima has a pretty good sweet and sour set. i may go there tonight.

i did a presentation about graduate school applications and how to find what's right for you. it was fun, but i felt weird talking about it like i was an authority. far from it i feel.

i feel that the yamagomi (the nagano magazine about anything) is always awesome, but the last one was particularly epic. great pieces.

having elementary on friday afternoon is far and away the best way to start a weekend.

3 day weekend this weekend, i'm unsure what i'll do....probably just be a bum.

i really, really need to get my passenger-side door on my car fixed. it's like prying open an oyster every time.

i feel like i'm eating out more with the newbies here, but my food spending isn't really higher since i'm spending less on meals at home. yay.

i keep meaning to go to pachinko...why don't I? oh right, i see the guys camping outside of them at 8:45 in the morning before they open.

i made janis' spinach salad for the first time last week, my how i missed it.

i think i'm hungry, judging by how many of these lines are about food.

i'll be going to kyoto in november to see old friends, kansai gaidai, the leaves changing, and to show stephen kyoto. should be great. :)

booked my ticket home for the winter. 19th of dec through jan 11th. going to be great to be home.

after halloween last year, i tossed the two pumpkins we had...and they took root and grew this year. we have two pumpkins, both around 40kg, sitting in the school right now. AWESOME.

i'm going to go to a halloween party this year, should be fun. i'll get pictures of my costume. :)

i keep using glue on to keep my school sandals in good condition because i didn't wanna spend another 8$ on a new pair and i had this glue sitting at my apt not being used.

it's starting to get cold, and i see leaves falling here and there even though the trees are still green.

swine flu is still around and plenty of people are sick, but it's not the terror it was a couple of months ago.

is it really almost 2010? i remember 1999 wasn't so far away. how did this happen? where is my decade? am i old now or what, musing on lost years?

spying cats sunbathing outside my apt is like, the best thing ever.

there's a spider just outside my apt door that i've taken to feeding. i had high hopes she would have been able to handle the grasshopper i tossed in her web, but alas, it got away.

i still stare at the mountains in wonder, every day, without fail. i'm going ot miss them.

i feel a lot more laid back in the class now, and i think the students like that.

pen pal letters came a couple of weeks ago. the students LOVED THEM. i introduced them by asking the class "whats the date today?" "september 25!" "boo! december 25th!" "whaa? huh? christmas?" "yes, it's christmas, because....i brought you PRESENTS" *holding out the letters* "WAHHH (as the students lose their minds)."

one of my co-teachers ahd to have surgery on her intestines, but was back early to keep teaching. she's a trooper.

there's probably more, and maybe i'll be more on the ball from now on out. ;)

SUMMER!

Well, bethany has rolled on home after you trip in Hokkaido. She's been home and had her welcome home party.

As for me, I'm enjoying my summer vacation. I came back to school on wednesday to find out that after all that discussion about it being IMPERATIVE that i'm at school during break to find out that it's just like spring break. In the sense that there's absolutely nothing for me to do at school, and most of my teachers are gone. Nice. :P

Well, that of course means that I'm bored outta my mind at school. Some JET's get to stay home over break, but as per our contract, it technically states taht we have to be at school all break unless our principal allows us to go home. The thing is, I think mine would let me go home, but he doesn't know. He came by on thursday and was like, 'you haven't gone home? you have business?' So...yeah. That of course means that i'm pulling a spring break, and taking long lunch breaks and leaving early. Blarg. It's just a bummer that I can't do a proper trip. Not that I could afford it anyway. :P

I talked to my buddy Chad, a friend from Kansai who's back in Japan on JET right now, we're hopefully going to get together over 'silver week', a one in 7 years lucky line-up of holidays in September.

the new JET's have arrived too, but I haven't had any luck meeting up with them just yet. I'll be able to see them on Wednesday though, at the orientation meeting up in Nagano-city. The parties after orientation should also be a fun time too. Yay! :-)

sapporo

bethany's here, we're up in sapporo, things are going well. :) we'll be off to asahikawa tomorrow, and hopefully be getting a nice look at daisetsuzan in the next couple of days. should be a great time!

sapporo seems nice enough and we might poke around here tomorrow before we take off to asahikawa. we'll see!

yea yea

It's been forever, I know :P dad visited, we had a great time, i'll get pictures up here eventually, bethany's visiting now, we're going to hokkaido on thursday morning. the summer break is about to start, i've been having some issues with school but it seems to be about cleared up. things are great, albeit warm, and I'm looking forward to starting year two here on JET. Holy cow, are we really moving that far ahead already? ay yi yi!

I promise I'll try and stay in touch! although I have a feeling most of you have moved on from this already since i'm so darn infrequent, my bad-desu.

say what?

yesterday in class with the 1st years I had a couple minutes where I was having them ask me different questions using "do you play / do you like?"

so one of the students proceedes to ask me "do you like pornography?" i start trying to stifle laughter and ask him to repeat it which he does. he was saying it a little weird and I knew he was trying to say "porno-graffiti", a popular japanese rock band.

my co-teacher looked like she was going to have a heart-attack for a couple seconds there. bwahah.

lol

mom and pete are home now, i think. I hope all is well, they were a bit behind schedule due to missing the connection in Chicago.

back to school, weather is nice today.

you can read up and catch pix on mom's blog she did. Besides, i think it'll be nice to have a fresh view of japan talking about it. ;)

i'm really only updating becuase of this diary entry from a student today:

I like English.
But I can't English.
I am hard!
Do you like English very much?

that is all.

bwahah

I know I know. still been a couple of weeks.

Mom and pete come tomorrow! Wah! I'm so excited!

I'm checking diaries at school, check out this entry:

How are you today? I was tired. Today I was weed. At playground. Do you like weed? I don't like weed...

obviously the kid was talking about weeding. but still. lulz.

this last weekend i went out for nepalese food and bowling and saturday with friends. it was a great time, and i got to meet new people.

sunday I went up to meet friends again and cooked mexican food. nom nom nom.

Today is day 9 of my 'lemonade detox'. I'm not following it to the letter (as you're only supposed to drink the lemonade the entire time, but i can't get outta school lunch.)

it's been going quite well! i feel lots healthier and have even lost some weight! it's great! :)

friday i went out for yakiniku (japanese bbq) with one of my students dad. he insisted to pay, and we got all you can eat / drink which was fantastic. it was sooo good. we went to karaoke afterwards too, and i had made sure to do plenty of drinking to get through the karaoke as this guy just assumes that i know every english song. :P

'do you know the carpenters?'
'no'
'do you know this song by the carpenters?'
'i don't know the carpenters.'
'lets sing this song by the carpenters.....why aren't you singing?'

i also went to school on saturday as i had volunteered to use it as leverage to let mom and pete come to elem on the 19th. unfortunately i had to miss the party up in nagano then. boo. oh well.