Sakura

So, the last couple of weeks have seen spring arrive in full, which has been nice.

The heater has been turned off, the windows opened, and the weather enjoyed. :)

The snow pack on the mountains is melting now too, so there's a constant stream of water going through the gutters that line all the streets, even though we haven't had rain in a couple weeks.

The rice paddies are being worked on in earnest now as well.

The sakura (cherry blossoms) have already come and gone. about a week ago they were coming out here at school, and today i noticed that several trees have lost all the blossoms. it has been really great to be outside when they are blooming to either see them or watch them fall. or even sweep them up. like light pink snowflakes.

i also went up to takato last weekend to see the sakura there. takato is suppoed to be one of the top 3 places in japan to see the sakura, and i hav eto admit it was darn good.
you can view takato photos by clicking here

and you can see iijima junior high schools by clicking here

the low point from the last week was hurting my back. last thursday i was doing something, no clue what set it off, by by the time i was leaving school it was getting bad, and all evening it got terrible. I was pretty much bed-ridden all night and had trouble moving. The next day i went in feeling decently better but still pretty bad. I was able to ask Kubota-sensei for some help in finding a chiro, and lucky me there was one right across street from school. I went there last thursday and it wasn't exactly as we'd think of a chiro in america, a lot less of the intense back-focusing exercises and stuff, but it helped. I have gone back again on monday, wednesday, and will go again tomorrow. I'm pretty close to 100%, and always feel better after i go.

also a bonus is that w/ my health insurance, it's pretty darn cheap to make the trips as well. Yesterday, i paid a total of $4.50 for my 45 minutes at the chiropractor. :D

also of note is that I'm stil having a terrible time remembering japanese names,a nd it just bugs me to NO FREAKIN' END that It's so hard :( I had the young english teacher promise to help me study them, and to recipricate I'm helping her study for her english teacher's exam this next summer. Which I did yesterday, and it was a pretty horrifying affair as I was having a terrible time helping her. For example, she took the practice test and checked her answers, but it just told her what was wrong, and not why it was wrong grammatically, so there were a couple that just left me boggled, and while I could theorize what was wrong, it was not only hard to explain, but seemed correct in the first place to me. that was a bad sign ahha.

I'm going to cook some mexican food tonight with friends, which I'm really really looking forward to. We had meant to do it last sunday but it had been pushed off due to bad scheduling on my part. (whoops!)

I found out i won't be heading to Iijima elem until nearly the end of May now because of, well, i really don't know why. No changes with Nanakubo though.

We're implementing some new curriculum for the elem's, as part of the new national endevor to drum up english study for the elem students, but I'm a little unsure about how it will work (read: completely unsure) and I'm a bit nervous.

i've booked my trip to korea to visit bethany (more like she booked it) and we're working on getting the hokkaido summer trip figured out as well. I booked dad's ticket to Japan last weekend too, which will be fun!

this last little tidbit is just for me, but after 9 seasons, I was finally able to take the perrenially terrible Idaho Vandals football team and turn them into National champtions. I started the dynasty with them last summer and it was pretty satisfying to make it to the top with them :')