eeeeh

Recently I've been a little homesick and just missing friends and family. Debs and I were talking about this...Japanese people are the friendliest people (when they get over their fear of you sometimes) but due to cultural/language difference it can be a challenge to have them understand who you really are at your core, which is something I miss about people back home, and it's hard to get to know them too because you aren't immediately part of the 'in-circle'. Usually people here aren't interested in becoming your friend and relying on you for friend-like qualities, but rather for satisfying their curiosity in you as a foreigner. I am making good friends here but I just miss home sometimes!

Recently, what else...I was up till 6 am on both Friday and Saturday nights doing this and that young-people type things with Nate, Hiro, Masahiro (my friend who owns a yakiniku restaurant), some random Austrian guy who was in town and some other locals. I'm busy at the start of this week. I've already taught 9 classes over two days with 2 private lessons on the side. At the end of this week I'm doing a special 'international understanding' class by teaching Spanish to about 60 of my kids at Nanchu Junior High. I'll also show them a couple Mexican culture things like some song and dance maybe. I'll also soon repeat the burrito experiment that I did at the same school in January...I might ask someone to ship me some pinto beans! The soy beans didn't work so well.

Otherwise my classes today went well even though I'm wiped out...I am working with some student teachers to show them how to work with an ALT (wish I could do the same for some of the actual teachers I work with). Also, just starting to look forward to my Tokyo conference / Okinawa trip!